On the Delights of Drinking Blood
by Quatermass
Summary: (Bashing! Lunar Harmony Poss Harem! Crackfic!) Based on, but not a full response to, DZ2's "Eyeballs to Entrails" challenge. Abducted after his Fourth Year, Harry finds his abductor to be a most unusual person indeed: rising Queen of Magical Britain's Vampires and Pudding Club leader, Luna Lovegood. And she intends to make him her consort, an offer he is surprisingly amenable to...
1. Foreword

**FOREWORD**

I don't normally do challenges and the like. However, there are exceptions to the rule, exceptions which I take up entirely on my own terms (so let that be a warning to anyone who thinks they can send me challenges: I DON'T ACCEPT THEM NORMALLY! DO NOT DO IT OR I **WILL** BITE YOUR HEAD OFF!). And after a bit of perusal of the forums of DZ2, I finally decided to do one of their challenges, albeit on my own terms. Said challenge is the _Eyeballs to Entrails_ challenge.

Apparently inspired by the character of Drusilla from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ , the challenge was to have Luna turned by a vampire…and to turn Harry in her own turn. Although I had flirted with the idea of a vampire Harry in _Haemophilia_ (itself based on the only three chapters published of sakurademonalchemist's _It's in the Blood_ ), he was only a dhampir in that story, and while grey, was still more of a hero. Here, while a hero, he's very much a dark hero.

I should also point out here, as DZ2 asked me to, that this is not a full response to the challenge, but rather, is just inspired by it. I intend to go against some of the rules of said challenge, hence the disclaimer.

As with _Haemophilia_ , I am basing the vampires in this story heavily on those seen in _Hellsing_ , with a few elements from _Legacy of Kain_ (like vampires only being weakened during the daytime rather than immolated by sunlight) and other sources. However, this will NOT be a crossover story, though it will have a number of references to other works, ESPECIALLY _Hellsing Ultimate Abridged_. Imagine Luna emulating some aspects of the Abridged version of Alucard, and you may have an idea of what to look out for. And like _Hellsing Ultimate Abridged_ , this story will have dark comedy in spades.

Anyway, some disclaimers before we get to the story. Firstly, there will be spoilers for the Harry Potter series. In addition, there WILL be a lot of Dumbledore-bashing, as well as possible Weasley bashing (of the usual suspects, anyway: namely bashing the unholy trinity of Ginny, Ron and Molly for once in my stories). You have been warned.

Secondly, there _will_ be annotations. If you feel the urge to complain, then resist it, or better yet, strangle it.

Thirdly, this is an M-rated work. There will be language, violence, and sexual references. In fact, as there will be quite a bit of crude humour and horrific violence, this WILL earn its M rating. Again, you have been warned.

Finally, the following is a fan-written work. Harry Potter is the property of JK Rowling and other owners. Please support the official release. Otherwise, you'll be getting to know a Dementor rather more intimately than you'd like…


	2. Chapter 1: On the Inadvisability of

**CHAPTER 1:**

 **ON THE INADVISABILITY OF DRINKING SEER'S BLOOD**

Thomas Smith, once better known (during his metaphorical 5 minutes of fame, which was closer to five weeks, but still pretty ephemeral in the fame stakes) as Tom the Bomb when he was part of the short-lived shock rock group Nuclear Arsenal, had partaken of a variety of drugs in his time. Of course, once he became a vampire, the only drug he needed was blood. But during his lifetime, he had taken a number of drugs. It was one of his dalliances with lysergic acid diethylamide while watching Arthur Brown scream about being 'the God of Hellfire' on Top of the Pops(1) that inspired him to form Nuclear Arsenal (a band one critic claimed would be like a nuclear weapon going off: all the exciting bits over in a flash, but with unwanted contamination lingering for decades if not centuries to come, a not-inaccurate assessment as it turned out).

If he was lucid enough to describe the effects of intoxication he was feeling after drinking this girl's blood, he would have described it as some bizarre combination of being drunk, and being high on a particularly potent hallucinogen. He was now forty-seven years old, though he looked perhaps half that thanks to being turned at a relatively young age, but he acted like a petulant teenager most of the time, and his sire had given up on teaching him a number of the various rules and truisms fledgling vampires should abide by. So he could be forgiven for not knowing a relatively minor rule.

Never drink the blood of a seer.

The reason for this was interesting. Vampires didn't _just_ drink blood: they could absorb the souls of their victims, should they wish to, and view the memories of their victims. They could also use said absorbed victims as familiars, as well as a means of avoiding death by sacrificing said familiar. Tom the Bomb (called Tom the Bum by many of his so-called peers) never really paid attention to his sire's lessons, and so didn't have a familiar to his name, though considering his desires for a harem of sexy vampire women, this was probably for the best. He just loved drinking blood and killing people. Of course, normal blood drinking would still transfer some memories, but he put those strange visions of other people's lives down to a bad acid flashback.

Anyway, the reason why drinking the blood of a seer was inadvisable was that seers absorbed information from many directions, from back, forth, and sideways in time. This was why seers made frustrating obtuse prophecies, when they had them at all. They could also see things that were there…but nobody else could.

Now, Tom the Bomb, who fancied himself a latter-day Byron (he certainly indulged in excesses even the notoriously hedonistic and unhinged Lord Byron would have flinched at, but he didn't have Byron's skill at poetry, sadly), had come across this father/daughter pair while at the Quidditch World Cup. Most if not all vampires were aware of wizards, and Tom decided that the World Cup might be a good place to find victims. After all, he had eaten his share of wizards. They tasted rather delectable, presumably due to the magic inside them. So before making his attack, he donned his warpaint (well, his facepaint from back when he was the lead singer of Nuclear Arsenal), dumped a fuckton of glitter onto himself, and had waited for an opportune moment.

After the game, and a bunch of Death Eaters started causing chaos, Tom found it a good opportunity to abduct the father and daughter, and took them into a secluded area of the woods, whereupon he broke the man's neck. Why? He wanted him alive but paralysed to witness his daughter's demise, and then drank the blood of the girl screaming for her daddy. Now, he didn't want to turn her. The few women he had managed to turn had parted ways with him shortly thereafter due to his obnoxious attitude (plus their insistence that, even if it was part of his vampire persona, vampires do NOT sparkle!), and he preferred his lovers to be at least twenty or up. No, he just wanted to kill her by drinking her blood.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that her blood had started to affect him, he lost control and turned her. He was unaware of that, though. He was babbling things that only made a small amount of sense, like "I CAN SEE THE FYOO-CHERRRR(2)!" and, "Veni! Veni! Veni!" He didn't realise that his would be victim had turned, and was about to turn the tables. Then again, perhaps it was for the best, for him, anyway…

* * *

Luna Lovegood was having a bad day. Though it started out as a good day, what with going to see the Quidditch World Cup finals, though she frequently found the mascots more entertaining than the game itself. Watching Veela get stroppy was frequently funny. But then, the Death Eaters attacked, and she and her father were pounced upon by this vampiric arsehole. He took them deeper into the woods, he broke her daddy's neck, and bit into her own. The pain was rather bad, she had to admit, and once the vampire had withdrawn, the turning hurt rather worse than the bite did. She idly wondered if this was how regeneration felt to the Doctor from _Doctor Who_ in one of the few remotely lucid parts of her mind.

Then, after what seemed like an eternity, but was closer to about ten or fifteen minutes, she came to. Unsteadily, she got to her feet, absently wiping the blood from the puncture wounds on her neck, before looking at the vampire dancing around, singing something about a girl called Lucy being in the sky with diamonds.

Now, she had a choice. Should she drink his blood, or just kill him? Well, she was a growing girl. She needed blood, even if it was from a tainted source like her vampiric sire. So she promptly opened up her mouth, revealing a set of teeth that a shark would be proud of, jagged and sharp, before leaping onto the vampire and biting down onto his neck with a roar of "OM NOM NOM!"

It was over within seconds, and soon, Tom the Bomb had bombed out. She had all of his memories at his disposal (sadly, not to many were actually of use to her), and she had her first familiar. He was also going to be her first metaphysical meatshield.

Then, she remembered what she had forgotten in what was understandably a tsunami of all-consuming rage. Namely, her father. She rushed to his side in an instant, not noticing or caring about the blood and gore that painted her lips and chin. If she had the wit to realise it at the time, she would have been heartened to know that her father didn't care. But at the moment, she was worried that she was about to witness the death of another parent.

Luna cast a diagnostic spell. While she wasn't a trained Healer by any means, her father had taught her a few basic spells for first aid for their expeditions. And what they were telling her wasn't good. If she shifted him too much, his injury would get worse, changing him from a quadriplegic to dead. Using a Portkey or Apparition was out of the question, and a Body Bind might cause the injury to worsen when applied. The authorities were also having to deal with the riot, and she doubted they'd want to help Xenophilus Lovegood, noted conspiracy theorist and muckraker, or Luna 'Looney' Lovegood, now a vampire.

Seeing the dilemma in his daughter's eyes, Xenophilus Lovegood, who saw what had happened, and knew precisely what his daughter had turned into, rasped, "Luna…make me a familiar. That way…I'll always be with you."

Luna, somewhat reluctantly, despite the fact that part of her was really raring to partake of this freely-offered meal, opened her mouth, revealing once more the shark-like maw of a real fucking vampire, before she bit down hard on her father's neck.

She was ashamed to admit that his blood tasted fantastic.

* * *

The next morning, Luna and her father (who, being her familiar, could be given a physical body of his own) were back at the Rookery. She let her father out with his own physical body because less questions would be asked that way. And she didn't particularly want to go to an orphanage, or be adopted. After absorbing her father into the darkness that now filled her soul, she had, under his direction, created a Portkey that led back to Ottery St Catchpole.

She had spent that time thumbing through _So, You're A Real Fucking Vampire Now_ , by Mr Alphonse Urquhart Card, the Brunested Sisters, and K Zelretch Schweinorg, a book which had fallen through a rift in time and space and into her bookshelf. Said rift was the temporary result of her mother's last experiment in spellcrafting.

Contrary to popular opinion, holy symbols and water did little to vampires. Sunlight just weakened them, but the same could be said for sedentary shut-ins in the sunlight-weakening stakes. A stake through the heart would be a threat to a fledgling, as would cutting off the head, so she had to be careful of that. Fire was a big threat, and so was Fiendfyre, but the latter was pretty much a threat to anything on this planet. It was basically the wizarding equivalent of napalm, albeit (barely) controllable, and the fire burned at temperatures a smelting furnace would envy.

Another misconception was that vampires didn't age. It was more that aging was wholly optional, which Luna found agreeable. If she didn't age, she would get to miss out on all sorts of fun stuff. She would just let herself age to some optimal age between her late teens and late twenties, and then stop. And she could eat normal food. It just wouldn't give her any nutritional value before coming out the other end. And considering how much she loved her puddings, she was grateful.

At the moment, she was looking at the section marked _Dealing with Immortality_. Much of the section could be boiled down to a single concept: _Get a hobby_.

Now, magicryptozoology would be a good long-term hobby, as would conspiracy theories (writing about them, investigating them, perhaps even instigating them now that her lifespan could be measured in centuries), but the book suggested variety would be good.

Luna pursed her lips. Should she pursue the path of the great Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged and insult everyone in Magical Britain in alphabetical order(3)? Take over the world using a children's card game? Unfortunately, she couldn't do the really fun stuff until she was older. Her daddy said so, and while he was now a familiar bound to her through vampiric haemophagy, she was still daddy's little girl. Which meant no summoning potentially amorous betentacled monstrosities from beyond time, space, and sanity until she was 18 at least.

She looked at one section under the hobbies section, where Mr Card had mentioned something about vampire hunting. _Now, the trick to doing it in a fun way, as long as you've got a few thousand souls spare, is to hold back. You'll get the shit shot out of you, or carved out of you, and it's a bit painful, but trust me, the 'OH FUCK!' look on their faces afterwards when you start wrecking their shit is TOTALLY worth it_.

That did have an interesting ring to it, vampire hunting…but Luna had her own thoughts about what to hunt. A smirk touched her features. Vampires always had some degree of bloodlust and loosening of morals, and combined with Luna's seer capabilities and her general oddness (which were only partly due to her seer abilities), it made for an unnerving combination.

You see, part of having the Sight meant that you were sensitive to all sorts of information, information the human brain, even one as lateral as Luna Lovegood's, was ill-equipped to interpret. But one thing she did know was that Magic was becoming stagnant, especially in Magical Britain. Between the Blood Purists and their hypocritical leader Voldemort on one side, and a certain old goat and his Greater Good on the other, the stasis quo had been maintained for far too long.

Luna Lovegood began to cackle, her malicious mirth echoing around the Rookery, until her father said, "My little bloodthirsty radish, I know sometimes you can't help yourself, but can you please erect wards before you start laughing in an evil manner? They already think we are insane, even if sanity is highly overrated, but if, say, the Weasleys hear that laughter, they may decide to call Dumbledore, and that will end badly."

Luna pouted, but did as she was bidden. Then, she started laughing evilly again. But her heart wasn't in it this time, having been interrupted earlier. She then began swearing profusely in an obscure language that hadn't been heard on the Earth (aside from obsessive linguistic scholars and fanboys) since the time Gilgamesh walked the planet, calling everyone in earshot mongrels.

Which was a crying shame, as the expletives were amongst the best ever committed to a language. English was lacking by comparison.

"Now, now, my little turnip, calm down. My mother certainly did nothing with oxen using a golden jewelled staff and rancid beef fat," Xenophilus chided gently. "I know you're frustrated, going through changes, you just don't need to be so vocal about it."

The syllables Luna uttered could be roughly translated to ' _Fuck that for a laugh_ ' in English, though it loses some of the poetry, elegance, and vehemence in translation. A small part of her mind was surprised at her own increasing vulgarity, but she guessed that was down to the vampirism loosening her inhibitions somewhat. Either that, or the shock of being turned gave her a bad case of coprolalia(4).

"Look, if you are going to keep talking like that young lady, you will get no pudding tonight."

Luna Lovegood's melodramatic wail of "NOOOOOOO!" was so strong, it actually broke the sound-dampening wards. In the Burrow, Molly Weasley heard it, believed it to be a Banshee, and took umbrage at what she considered to be unwanted competition…

 **CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **Yeah, okay, this is VERY cracky. Hopefully, it entertained you guys. Luna's going to be the mutant offspring of so many crazy characters. Abridged Alucard, Tiny Tina from** ** _Borderlands_** **(as you'll see in the next chapter), Missy from** ** _Doctor Who_** **…yeah, fun times are ahead.**

 **Now, while I am disregarding some of the rules of the challenge, one thing that will remain is that Luna's first fledgling WILL be Harry. Tom the Bomb and Xenophilus don't count: they are familiars.**

 **1\. I am referring, of course, to Arthur Brown's famous song** ** _Fire_** **, which begins with him screaming "I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE, AND I BRING YOU…FIRE!"** ** _Top of the Pops_** **was a music show that used to run on the BBC for decades. Unfortunately, it's not been without controversy, especially in recent years with the Jimmy Saville saga…**

 **2\. This is a reference to** ** _Dragonball Z: Bardock- Father of Goku Abridged_** **.**

 **3\. Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged and his quest appeared in the Douglas Adams novel** ** _Life, the Universe, and Everything_** **. Which, incidentally, was derived from an old, rejected** ** _Doctor Who_** **script Adams wrote called** ** _Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen_** **. No, really!**

 **4\. You know how people with Tourette's Syndrome are stereotypically shown to impulsively swear frequently? This is the technical term for that, though it only occurs in a small percentage of people with Tourette's Syndrome.**


	3. Chapter 2: On the Criteria for

**CHAPTER 2:**

 **ON THE CRITERIA FOR MEMBERSHIP IN THE PUDDING CLUB**

 _Just under a year later_ …

For a time, Harry Potter drifted in the dark oblivion of unconsciousness. Recollection came to him slowly, along with consciousness. Of the misery of Fourth Year. Of Ron getting all jealous over Harry being forced to enter the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Of Hermione's quixotic crusade for freeing House Elves (he was for it in principle, but between most House Elves not wanting freedom and Hermione's obnoxious attitude towards anything SPEW-related, he just didn't want to touch it with a ten foot pole). Of Voldemort's resurrection, and the death of Cedric Diggory. Of the anger he felt at being sent back to Durzkaban, the Minister of Magic disbelieving him and Dumbledore about Voldemort. Then, he felt, oddly enough, sleepy during the car journey back.

The next thing he knew, he was waking up, shirtless (but thankfully not pantsless), on an armchair. A rather nice armchair. He blinked, made to stand up, and sagged back. He was surrounded by hooded and cloaked figures, figures who reminded him of the Death Eaters, sans masks. They certainly weren't Dementors, as the air was too warm (rather nice, actually), and he wasn't hearing his mother screaming. One of the hooded figures said, "…you think anyone noticed? If the Old Bill come in here, well, they'll jump to the wrong conclusions, right?"

"Trust me, dealing with the Muggle police is the least of our worries," another hooded figure said. "Between Fudge being an imbecile, You Know Who hiding out, and Dumbledore keeping his cards close to his chest, we're up shit creek without a paddle if this gets out. Anyway, why do we need these hooded cloaks? He's going to think we're Death Eaters."

"Because it's _tradition_ in a coven, you berk, and the Queen wanted this!" hissed a woman's voice. "Merlin, I shouldn't have let that old goat send me your way. Deep-cover infiltration to find out who the new Queen is, he said. You'll gain us allies against Voldemort, he said. What did it get me? I had to look like a bloody Goth, followed by getting the most painful hickey ever! Incidentally, you know he's awake, right?" As the other hooded figures turned to face Harry, the hooded figure who was the woman waved. "Wotcher, Harry."

Harry blinked. For a sinister group of people wearing hooded cloaks, it was strangely…casual? "Uhh, wotcher?"

One of the figures sighed. "He's confused. No surprises there. Are we _trying_ to be sinister and enigmatic?"

"We are denizens of the night, sinister and enigmatic's sort of the default setting for us, until the Queen came along. Got to admit, she's a proverbial ray of sunshine. Okay, Nymphadora, you're up."

The woman who had greeted Harry promptly stomped down on that hooded figure's foot. "Don't bloody call me Nymphadora, Newman!" she snarled. "It's Tonks! Go and get the Queen, okay?!"

The man called Newman limped away, grumbling about a crazy shape-shifting bint. Tonks gave him the finger, before she returned her attention to Harry. "Sorry about that, Harry." She pulled off the hood, revealing a heart-shaped face with bubblegum pink hair in a spiky, almost punk-like do. "And sorry about all this. We just thought your reaction to being taken somewhere suddenly might be violent. My name is Tonks. Just Tonks. I may not look it, but I'm a cousin of your godfather, my mum being born a Black and all."

"…Can you prove that?"

Tonks snorted, before her face changed into that of Sirius Black. "Nope," she said, her voice still feminine, "and if I wanted to, I could imitate him, or your friends, and you'd be none the wiser."

"Says the wannabe Auror who's got clumsiness as a flaw on her character sheet," another hooded figure snarked.

Tonks, whose face had changed back to normal, snapped, "Shut up, Stoker! Seriously, who was the genius who brought a guy called Stoker into a coven?"

"Blame my sire," the hooded figure said with a shrug. "She's looking to collect fledglings who have links to paranormal literature, especially that pertaining to…"

"Okay, got it, your sire's a fucking weirdo. I mean, I knew she was, though she has nothing on the Queen. I mean…the Pudding Club(1)? Though I have to admit, she's entertaining when she isn't making me cack my pants."

"Then my job is done," murmured an ethereal voice. In skipped a girl just a bit younger than him. She wore a rather colourful dress, had a wand tucked behind her ear, and a rather large cuddly toy of something that he was sure was meant to be Cthulhu. She had dirty blonde hair, rather protuberant pale eyes, and a general sense of dottiness to her. He realised she looked vaguely familiar. Had he seen her in passing at Hogwarts?

But there was this strange air about her. Like there was madness and intelligence and darkness and insanity clashing within her like a storm. He didn't know why he felt that coming from her. But oddly enough, he wasn't afraid of it. In fact, he felt almost comforted, and he didn't know why. Except…maybe this was someone who was more than a little broken inside.

Like he was.

"Sorry, but your Once and Future Queen was having a nap to purge the Wrackspurts after such a big meal." The girl looked at them, before she said, "Okay. Save for Tonks, you lot can go. Just remember, if you speak of this to anyone who shouldn't know, I will hunt you down, and turn your entrails into black puddings, which I will then proceed to violate every orifice you have with, including the orifices you didn't know you had." She waved her hand. "Toodles," she said cheerfully.

The room cleared pretty quickly after that, and then, the girl waved a hand. The doors closed, and then locked. A short pair of electronic-sounding beeps echoed through the room. She then sat down in a chair opposite him, and smiled. It was not quite a reassuring smile. There was nothing malicious in that pleasant smile, but it showed just a touch too many teeth to be indicative of a healthy mind. "Sorry about kidnapping you, Harry, but it was expedient to get you away from the Dursleys and the Order of the Phoenix before they could meddle any longer. Don't worry, you're amongst friends."

"…I don't know you."

"Well, that's understandable. I can say without hesitation that few people know me. They generally can't be bothered. Too many Wrackspurts. I'm Luna Lovegood, but most people call me Looney. You are Harry Potter, but most people call you the Boy Who Lived. I'm sure we despise our respective epithets. They say a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, but Shakespeare was being rather too naïve(2). Or maybe he had too many Wrackspurts, they can infect Muggles."

Harry blinked. He would have said that he was rapidly losing a grip on the situation, but that implied he had any to begin with. He looked at Tonks, who said, "She's like that. Anyway, Luna here's the Queen of the Pudding Club. And yes, I know she looks young. Quite frankly, when I was fourteen, I was fending off amorous boys with a stick, not becoming Queen of Vampires."

After that particular revelation, Harry could only say, in a flat voice, " _What._ "

Luna pouted. "Nymphadora, what have I told you about spoiling the plot twist?!"

Tonks slapped Luna around the head, causing the younger vampire's head to _twang_ comically, vibrating back and forth like a cartoon character's head. "What have I told you about calling me Nympha- _fucking_ -dora!"

"But it means 'Gift of the Nymphs'," Luna said. "You should be proud of your name. Tonks sounds like someone sneezing with every step."

"I like it. Anyway, you're the one who hates standing on fucking convention, you hypocritical little harridan."

Luna, rather maturely, poked her tongue out at Tonks. Harry got the feeling that the two, despite their bickering, had some underlying affection, a friendship. That being said…he held up his hand. "So…Luna is a vampire?"

"Yep," Luna said with a bright grin. A grin that suddenly became filled with sharp, shark-like teeth.

"I don't think it'd make you any better, but I'm one too," Tonks said with a sheepish smile, also filled with sharp, shark-like teeth. "And before you ask, they change from normal to _Jaws_ when you want to."

Harry, after a moment, asked, "Why me? Why am I here?"

Luna cocked her head in a surprisingly endearing quizzical fashion. "What an interesting philosophical question."

"Luna, less of the weird tangential answers," Tonks said with a roll of the eyes. "I'm sure he had enough of that shit from Trelawney."

Once more, Luna pouted, before she said, "Well, what you are doing here is simple. I am the Queen of All Vampires in Magical Britain, the head of the coven of covens, the Pudding Club. However, I am yet to turn anyone. I had decided to postpone that decision, because I wanted quality over quantity. Last year, my father withdrew me from Hogwarts, citing the incidents of the past couple of years, but in truth, I was embarking on building my empire, drawing together the disparate covens of vampires in Britain under my banner. I haven't completely succeeded, but the Pudding Club is now a major power in Magical Britain. And we intend to bring an end to the problem children of Magical Britain. So yes, we aren't affiliated with Voldemort and his little boy band of genocidal maniacs. In fact, we're going to eat them."

"…You didn't answer the question."

"Oh, well, I brought you here to make you my first fledgling, or boyfriend if you prefer," Luna said with a smile.

"Oh. Huh." Which, understandably, was about as coherent as Harry could really make his response under the circumstances. She could have only shocked him more if she had asked to have sex with him.

"Luna, I think you broke him."

"I have a tendency to do that. Uncle Nyarlathotep trained me well."

"You call…the Crawling Chaos…an uncle…you know, I shouldn't be surprised anymore." Tonks ran a hand through her hair. "Now, Harry…in case you're wondering, Sirius knows. We told him shortly before the Third Task. Not that he could tell you anything. After all, it could have been overheard. Already, Fudge is looking to discredit you. He's afraid of Dumbledore usurping him, not realising that Dumbledore doesn't have to. And over the past few years, well, how much help has Dumbledore actually given you to stop Voldemort?"

"What are you implying?" Harry asked. He didn't like what Tonks was saying one bit.

"Let's just say I found it hard to believe myself, and I was just as angry as you will be. Harry…I promise you this: become a vampire, and there will be no more secrets kept from you, at least where anything we know about. What you see will be hard to believe, but if you don't become a vampire, the odds of you surviving to reach my age are…oh, how do the Aussies put it? Buckley's chance, at best. And while you have the devil's own luck, luck doesn't last forever. You'll have power and strength to make sure Voldemort, his minions, hell, anyone who will hurt you and yours never do so again. I didn't want to be a vampire at first, but then, I decided, if being a vampire meant being strong enough to help against Voldemort, I'd do it. Haven't regretted my decision…much."

"But…you'll only tell me the truth when I'm a vampire?"

Luna nodded. "It's less about telling you the truth than showing you the truth. When vampires consume blood, they can also read the memories of those that they do. They can also consume the souls of those they drink blood from, and have those people as familiars. I know you might take issue with this…but what would you say to having Death Eaters being able to do your bidding? Turning Voldemort's own forces against him? I promise you answers, Harry, but if you refuse to become a vampire…well, I'll eat you anyway, turn you into a familiar. It's a better fate than what awaits you if I don't."

"I don't believe you."

"Nobody ever does. Why do you think they called me 'Looney'?" The tone with which Luna said that got through to Harry. That sad resignation in her tone. She was being sincere, he realised.

And he had been there before. Not being believed. Time and time again. The Dursleys, McGonagall, Snape, Ron, Fudge…he had been subjected to disbelief for things that weren't his fault. Though at least with McGonagall, her scepticism at the time regarding the Philosopher's Stone being stolen was understandable in retrospect.

But the Dursleys and Snape…their scepticism was unjustified, as was how they expressed it. Ron and the school didn't believe him when he told them he hadn't entered the Tri-Wizard Tournament…so why he allowed Ron to become his friend again, he didn't know. Maybe it was because he was his first. But most of the school turned on him, and the rest cheered him on to his death at the claws and fire of a dragon, believing him to be a brave hero who cheated his way in, all for the glory of Gryffindor. Oh, and there was that bit about him being a Parseltongue back in Second Year.

And now, Fudge didn't believe him when Harry professed his godfather's innocence, and hadn't believed him when he said Voldemort had come back.

And then, it came back to him. Every time he had asked Dumbledore not to go back to the Dursleys, he had been refused. Harry had told him about what had happened, but Dumbledore blew him off every time.

Well, Harry had had enough of being disbelieved. And of being viewed as a freak, as something lesser.

Something in him twisted into a new shape. A new determination. He wanted to have his own life back. So, he just had one question for Luna. "If I accept, I won't be your slave as a fledgling?"

"No. I can if I wanted to…but it's optional. I want you as an equal…as my consort…as a King of the Pudding Club…as the King of the Night."

 _Heh…Snape always was going on about how I was a spoiled, pampered prince_ , Harry said, grinning viciously. He looked up at Luna. "I accept."

Luna's smile was strangely both sad and anticipatory. She stood, and walked over to him, gently helping him to his feet. Then, while standing on her toes, almost sensuously, she began to lick his neck. He felt a strange, numbing coolness in her tongue's wake.

Tonks, noticing his confusion, said, "We can put a mild anaesthetic into our saliva, Harry. Anyway, I'll leave you two alone for the moment."

Soon after she left, Luna looked at him, before she said, "As it's your first time, I'll be gentle."

"…I need an adult(3)?"

"You've got something better: a Vampire Queen." With that, he felt her breath on his throat…and then, the distant sting of her fangs as she bit down hard.

* * *

Tonks walked to another room in the Pudding Club HQ. The other members had gone home. She removed her robes, revealing a more punky set of clothing that suited her hair colour and style. She was glad Harry had accepted. It would make things so much more easier with their other guest.

Tonks entered the room, finding that their other guest was dipping her head into a Pensieve. She pulled it out, and was staring, disbelievingly, at a wall.

"Sorry about that, but, well, I thought you'd believe memories in a Pensieve," Tonks said. "Hard to grasp still, innit? That Dumbledore, of all people, would use my affliction against me. He did with Lupin too."

The girl nodded mutely.

"Anyway, your parents will be sent to Australia. Madam Bones will make sure they're kept under the Fidelius. It was pretty hard to persuade them not to take you with them, but I knew you'd want to stay by Harry's side. The Queen knew that, out of everyone, you were Harry's most loyal friend. She's turning him as we speak."

"He said yes?" the girl asked quietly.

"Yes. I think what happened to him this year got to him. But he doesn't need to face it alone," Tonks said gently. "That is why the Queen is going to have him turn you. Because while they will be consorts, he needs a true loyal friend."

After a moment, Hermione Granger nodded. "Then I will be there for him. I owe him too much for it to be otherwise. I will become a vampire for him."

 **CHAPTER 2 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **Dammit, this was hard to write. I originally decided to write Luna turning Harry against his will, but I went back and looked at the original challenge, which indicated that Harry willingly becomes a vampire. So I altered the second chapter, which is the SECOND version to feature the Pudding Club. I won't be following the challenge religiously, as mentioned before, but I wanted to do that much.**

 **Those who followed this story in** ** _The Cauldron_** **will notice that I diverged from my original story pretty quickly. Sorry about that. I just felt the story I was writing was losing the combination of humour and horror that made it so fun to write, hence turning Tonks into a vampire, and setting it in Fifth Year. I detest** ** _The Order of the Phoenix_** **, and consider it to be the nadir of the series, so taking any opportunity I can to subvert the story is good. I had considered that briefly before the version where I set it in Fourth Year, but after deciding I had written too many Fourth Year stories, I decided to change it back.**

 **Incidentally, I originally had Hermione appear only in later chapters, but I eventually**

 **1\. What else would Luna call her own vampire coven? This name was actually quite deliberate: I remembered an episode of** ** _Midsomer Murders_** **called** ** _Murder on St Malley's Day_** **, where a secretive school club called the Pudding Club is at the crux of the episode's murders. Unlike that episode, this Pudding Club, while dark and violent, is considerably more heroic.**

 **2\. In the original second chapter posted in** ** _The Cauldron_** **, a frequent reviewer of mine, Zane Tribal Tyne Alexandros, pointed out an interesting historical anecdote: Shakespeare was probably taking a potshot at a theatre known as the Rose, which was located near a sewer outlet.**

 **3\. A** ** _Dragonball Z Abridged_** **reference. A running gag with Gohan, particularly in episode 18, though it happens later. Usually, whenever Gohan responds to some sort of innuendo, it's with "I need an adult", to which the usual response is "I am an adult".**


	4. Chapter 3: On the Advantages and

**CHAPTER 3:**

 **ON THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF VAMPIRISM**

Harry ached everywhere, though his neck and his scar, which was even now fading, were the major sources of it. "Okay, what the fuck was that?" he demanded as he sat back down in the chair, noticing distantly that his scrawny frame had now gotten rather ripped.

"You mean the bit where your scar started oozing black slime like something out of _Quatermass II(_ _1)_ and black smoke in the shape of Voldemort's face emerged, cussed us out, and then vanished? Yeah, well, I think I know what that was. During the time since I was turned, I ate a few wizards who were into the Dark Arts, including one who worked as a Cursebreaker for Gringotts. It's called a Horcrux. Think of it as a fragment of Voldemort's soul."

Harry blinked. He had a piece of Voldemort's fucking soul in his scar? His immediate thoughts were, understandably, _Ew, ew, ewww_ … "Why was it there?"

"I dunno. Best guess? Voldemort probably made a lot of them already. You see, a Horcrux is made when you murder someone shortly after completing a certain ritual. The act of murder, combined with the ritual and the power of someone's life lost, splits the soul, and the user of the ritual can then place part of their soul into a physical object. I don't think Voldemort intended to make you into a Horcrux. I think he intended to use your death to do it. Unfortunately, for him anyway, whatever your mother did to protect you made the Killing Curse go BOING! SPANG! KABLOOEY!" Luna illustrated the effect of a rebounding Killing Curse with some rather childish charades-like actions. "Anyway, the upshot was, Voldemort's soul was shattered by the rebounding spell, and a bit of it latched onto you."

Harry thought back. He remembered the headaches he had around Quirrellmort, and the visions he had over the prior year. After a moment, he said, "That makes sense. And I am far from happy with having him squat in my head for ages without paying rent! Seriously, the fucker was ripping me off! I'll protest! I'll sue! Then I'll rip his lungs out! I will too!" He blinked. "Okay, why did I say that(2)?"

"Vampirism affects your aggression, and does tend to muck around a little with your sanity," Luna said with a shrug. "Sanity's overrated."

"So, I'll have anger issues? Yeah, I think I already had those."

"Don't worry, Harry," Luna said, smiling gently. "I enjoyed drinking your blood. I'd offer you mine, but, well, seer's blood is like drinking an alcoholic beverage spiked with a potent hallucinogen. So, basically like a Saturday night for Hunter S Thompson. Daddy and I met him once, actually. We got along well(3)." She then called out, "Nymphomaniac, you can come back in. I know you're back."

"I swear, one of these days, I'm going to go all Vlad the Impaler on your arse," Tonks grumbled, coming back into the room. She had divested herself of her hooded robes, revealing more punky clothing that went with her hair. She looked Harry up and down and whistled appreciatively. "Wow, you could probably grate cheese on your midriff now."

"Yes, but the smell would linger something fierce(4)," Luna remarked. "Anyway, vampires are basically like a human predator. Most of those weaknesses are made up, and the others are less effective than you think. Just avoid stakes through the heart, decapitation, or fire. Which is pretty much what any sane human would do, so, keep doing what you're doing. You can still age voluntarily until you decide you've had enough. You can still eat and drink normally, you just don't get any nutrition from it. Your poo will be a bit more colourful because of different…I won't say digestion, because it's more processing the food to eliminate it from the body rather than extracting nutrients."

Tonks grimaced, her hair turning green. "Yeah, not gonna lie, Luna, but that's too much information."

"Well, I can see why the Sorting Hat put you into Hufflepuff rather than Ravenclaw. To a true Ravenclaw, there's no such thing as too much information. Even if it drives one insane. Well, as long as that sort of thing doesn't come with tentacles coming out of the walls and Euclidean geometry going bye-bye…well, more than it already has in Hogwarts." Luna sighed. "Now, we feed on blood. We can feed from someone without killing or turning them easily enough, so if you have someone willing to be a blood bank, it can help. However, one thing that I reckon you will need in the near-future will be familiars. You see, vampires truly get stronger when they absorb souls when they drink blood. Now, I know what you're thinking, I'm combining two things you hate: slavery, and Dementors. Well, save for my daddy, all of the familiars I have are Death Eaters, and my daddy I don't treat like a slave. I made him a familiar to save his life. Anyway, having familiars is vital. If you have a familiar, you can sacrifice one to act as an extra life should you be attacked by a fatal attack. Which is why I've provided your first."

Harry glared. "If you think for one second that I'm going to eat someone's soul, then you've got…" He stopped when Luna took something from her dress, what looked like three stones, and placed them on the floor, before waving her wand. And there were the Dursleys, looking outraged and frightened both.

Harry didn't know whether it was the vampirism in his veins, or the repressed hatred he had towards them, but he realised that there were some people in the world he did want to eat. And the Dursleys neared the top of that list.

"You! BOY! WHAT IS THIS FREAKISHNESS?!" Vernon bellowed like the belligerent walrus that he was. He charged at Harry, intent on making him pay, only for Harry to grab Vernon, and hurl him into the wall, causing a shallow crater to form. Harry blinked as he realised what he had just done. Vernon was, after all, morbidly obese. And yet, Harry had thrown that weight at speed into a wall, hard enough to dent it, and it was easy as throwing a Quaffle.

Harry looked at his hands, firstly in fear. How strong was he? Was he a true freak at last?

He snarled quietly as he came to a realisation. They had hated him for his freakishness, tried to beat it out of him physically, emotionally, and psychologically. They hated him because he had something they didn't. Vernon was a xenophobic bastard, Petunia was a jealous shrivelled up tart, and Dudley was a spoiled little shit.

He had had enough. They tormented him for the last time.

He didn't really notice the shadows in the room lengthening, the darkness purling around him like the tendrils of some eldritch abomination, until he was stalking towards the dazed Vernon Dursley. He knew, on some instinctive level, that it was coming from him. And he didn't care. Something within him had snapped. Now, he was only caring about those he _wanted_ to care about.

"No, stop it!" Petunia screamed. " _Stop it at once!_ "

"Why?" Harry said too calmly as he reached Vernon. " _You never did._ " With that, he grabbed Vernon by the shirt, and clamped down on his neck with his jaws.

The rush of blood was intoxicating. It was one thing to drink it from the bottle, so to speak, but to drink it live…he felt his instincts clamouring at him, and he decided that Vernon's bulk would make a good meatshield. He would become his first familiar.

Vernon gurgled his last, before his life and soul was taken into Harry, and his carcass dropped to the ground. Petunia's screams were deafening. The faint stench of Dudley soiling himself reached Harry's nose.

Harry blinked when the memories of Vernon Dursley reached his mind. Of previous encounters with Dumbledore, of the old man giving his aunt and uncle…'instructions'. To keep Harry psychologically downtrodden. Of money changing hands, money that Dumbledore said was from the Potter Family Vault. Money that was never spent on Harry. Of wards that Dumbledore said would protect the family from the wizards, and which would drain Harry's own, to keep his power under control, and to keep Harry's mind pliable. He saw it all in a flash, like a sped-up movie, more impressions than anything else, but all the more powerful for it.

He couldn't believe it. It was a trick. And yet, somehow, his vampiric instincts, awakened to tell falsehood in memories, knew it was true. And he knew how to get corroboration.

He whirled to snarl at Petunia, not caring about the blood dripping from his lips. "You…you…you bitch. You took my money, you stole my money, and you treated me like a servant, a punching bag!"

"As you deserved to be!" Petunia snarled, her anger overcoming her fear. "That money was what I deserved after your whore of a mother lorded magic and money over me! You should have died with them, you monster!"

"Monster…yes, I suppose I am. But even if I was, I wouldn't do this unless you treated me like one. Because do you know what monsters do?" Harry knelt down next to a cowering Petunia. "Bitch, _I eat people_." Gripping her hair in one hand, he wrenched her head back, and bit down hard on her neck.

* * *

It tasted too good to eat them to be normal, Harry thought as Tonks cast cleaning spells on him. Luna, meanwhile, was throwing the bodies of the Dursleys effortlessly into a trapdoor he hadn't noticed in the floor, and heard something chewing on them. "Who's a good Gl'bgolyb(5), eh?" she cooed affectionately.

But the guilt he felt was nothing compared to the anger and dismay he felt upon finishing. The memories were far from pleasant, but not just because of what sort of people the Dursleys were.

No, Harry had a foundation of his world knocked out from underneath him. All this time, he believed that Dumbledore was his mentor, his grandfather figure. While Obliviations would erase memories to a degree, even modify them, the blood kept a record anyway. He knew that in his bones…no, his very blood.

Oh, and there was the fact that Snape, of all people, had been his mother's childhood friend. Something NOBODY had told him. Something he was sure had a bearing on that damned bat's attitude to him.

Luna had given a magical vow that she hadn't modified the Dursleys' memories in any way. She seemed to know something he didn't…well, a lot of things, especially as she was a Ravenclaw. Tonks gave the same vow.

Slowly, mournfully, Luna began singing a song…

" _Everything you know is wrong,_

 _Black is white, up is down, and short is long,_

 _And everything you used to think is so important_

 _Doesn't really matter anymore_

 _Because the simple fact remains that_

 _Everything you know is wrong,_

 _Just forget the words and sing along._

 _All you need to understand is_

 _Everything you know is wrong._

 _Everything you know is wrong._ "

There was nothing mocking in the song. Harry didn't know that Luna was using a comedy song to try and, if not cheer him up, then at least comfort him.

"…Can I trust anyone?" Harry asked.

"…With your vampirism? Only your godfather…and one other. We brought her here at the same time we brought you. That being said, we can't go back to Hogwarts. That was one of the reasons why I had Daddy pull me out. They have anti-vampire wards. But I can see possible futures dimly, and Fudge was going to try and engineer your expulsion from Hogwarts anyway."

He didn't know whether Luna was pulling his leg or not. He didn't even know if she was leading him down a garden path to Hell. Then again, considering he had just eaten three of his relatives, he was probably on that path already.

But with that revelation came resolution. In its own way, his life was already spiralling into Hell. He had Voldemort gunning for him, Dumbledore as a puppeteer for whatever reason of his own, none of it good, and Snape being an odious prick. And if what Luna and Tonks said was true, most if not all of Magical Britain was turning on him anyway. And in any case, even if he was becoming a monster, he could be one who could look at himself in the mirror.

Because looking through the Dursleys' memories, as well as those of the Death Eaters, put things into perspective. The Dursleys were vile excuses for human beings, and so were the Death Eaters. Harry knew that if either Vernon or Petunia had magic at this point in their lives, they would join the Death Eaters. They had the same xenophobic tendencies, especially Vernon, the same elitist attitude, the same contempt for any human life bar their own.

He was unaware of Luna coming closer to him at first. "I saw your life, Harry, from your blood. Never forget, you were strong even before I turned you, for only the strong could have endured such a thing and come out functional. Never be afraid of seeking power. Only be careful about how you use it. If only to prevent someone from raping your chest with a wooden penis."

Harry couldn't help but laugh, albeit uneasily, at her definition of being staked. At least he assumed that's what she meant. Then again, who knew what was going on in her mind?

Still, maybe he had another friend after all.

"Tonks, can you go and fetch our other guest?" Luna asked.

Tonks, promptly, seemed to grow a hunched back and a warped face. "Yeth, Mathter," she lisped facetiously, before limping out.

"Metamorphagus abilities," Luna explained. "Handy when you're an Auror…or when you're a spy for the Pudding Club. You have to be born to it, though. Incidentally…" She handed him a shirt. "I think our guest may have a nosebleed if she saw you shirtless."

Harry didn't know what she meant, but donned the shirt anyway. Shortly afterwards, Tonks escorted in a rather nervous, bushy-haired girl who looked very familiar. "Hermione?" he asked. "What're you doing here?"

Hermione indicated Tonks. "She brought me here. My parents have been sent to Australia for their protection, but I wanted to stay and help you. Harry, they've shown me things…things that…well, I scarcely believe. But…I want to help you. And Tonks was very persuasive." She then saw Luna, and muttered, "And Tonks told me, but I didn't believe it. Luna Lovegood, Queen of the Vampires."

"In Magical Britain," Luna said. "Don't worry, you don't have to curtsey. We're going to be sharing, after all." She skipped over to Hermione, and looked at her solemnly. "I'm sorry I broke your faith in Dumbledore. People forget that the light can cast the darkest shadows. Magical Britain can't change for the better. Not until those responsible for its stagnation are gone. We are not going to kill willy-nilly. But we are going after those who would ruin our lives for their own gain, or else take those lives. Are you in?"

"For Harry. Only for Harry," Hermione said. "He was my first true friend. He fought a Troll for me, saved my life. And if he joined you willingly, then I want to be by his side forever." Then, after a moment, she shrugged. "Anyway, I've read up on vampires, their strengths and weaknesses. Much less weak than Muggle fiction."

"Blame the man who called himself Dracula," Luna said. "He told Bram Stoker a lot of the stuff for shits and giggles, encouraging the misconceptions already there, infecting him with Wrackspurts."

"That explains a lot. Anyway, besides helping Harry…well, I want to view this as a novel experience."

Luna grinned. "That's the spirit! Welcome to the family!"

* * *

In another timeline, as Jack Baker snuck up on someone trying to leave the house, he chuckled. As he grabbed the man's shoulder and spun him around, fist cocked back, he said, "Welcome to the…ACHOO!"

His would-be victim blinked as he was covered in mutagenic fungus-contaminated snot. "Uhhh..."

Jack took a filthy handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his victim's face, then wiped his own nose. "Sorry 'bout that. Allergies, you see. Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Heheheh…welcome to the family, son!" He then punched the man out cold. But it just wasn't the same with the element of surprise lost.

* * *

Luna continued to smile, unaware of her cross-dimensional effects of saying things carelessly. "Harry, you do the honours."

Harry got to his feet, and approached Hermione. Despite his new abilities, he actually felt nervous about this. His question died on his lips when she met his gaze. While there was fear in them, she still nodded. "If it's you, that's fine. I trust you, Harry."

"Really? You're willing to become a vampire…be possibly hunted by other people? Drink blood? Kill?"

"I'd have been hunted anyway just for being a Muggleborn. This way, the odds are a bit better," Hermione said. "As long as I'm still me…I can live with that. And if it's with you…"

Harry chuckled sadly. "Hermione…thank you."

And with that, as Tonks left the room, and Luna watched on, Harry began to lick her neck gently. Hermione moaned softly, which was understandable, given the intimacy of the action. Then, Harry knew the time had come. He felt his teeth change. Trying hard not to bite down like some vicious animal, he bit down gently and tenderly…and was rewarded with another moan from Hermione, and the gush of sweet sanguine ambrosia into his throat…

 **CHAPTER 3 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **So, Harry's beginning to come to terms with being a vampire. Oh, and he's eaten the Dursleys and turned Hermione. This was part of the challenge, and if you're thinking he did this rather abruptly, the vampirism is affecting him somewhat, bringing his more darker emotions to the forefront. He will angst a bit about his lack of guilt, but he's not going to be drowning in it.**

 **Incidentally, Luna sings the chorus to** ** _Everything You Know Is Wrong_** **by Weird Al Yankovic. Obviously, I don't own it. It's a funny song, but I thought Luna could sing it in a sort of lugubrious way, to reassure Harry in her own twisted way. And I'm sure many of you will recognise where the sneeze cut sequence comes from. If not, well, it's a spoof of** ** _Resident Evil 7_** **.**

 **1\. Yes, my username comes from somewhere. The** ** _Quatermass_** **serials were science fiction TV serials from the 1950s, the main character being Professor Bernard Quatermass. The black slime from the Horcrux probably resembled a similar substance that, while corrosive to humans, was part of the food for the Ammonids in** ** _Quatermass II_** **.**

 **2\. Well, he said it because DZ2 has both the original quote (from** ** _Batman: The Animated Series_** **, specifically** ** _The Joker's Wild_** **), and they also have a challenge where the quote should be used. And while I'm not doing that particular challenge, I thought I'd try and crowbar a modified version of the quote to show Harry's decreasing anger-control.**

 **3\. I reckon that Xenophilus Lovegood has to have met Hunter S Thompson, the famous proponent of Gonzo Journalism and writer of, amongst other things,** ** _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_** **.**

 **4\. These lines are based on a similar exchange between Yugi and Marik Ishtar (under the crappy pseudonym of Malik Blishtar) in** ** _Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series_** **, namely Episode 39:** ** _Card Games at 20,000 Feet_** **.**

 **5\. This is the unpronounceable name of Feferi's Lusus (aka monstrous guardian) from** ** _Homestuck_** **. Think a ghost-white betentacled monstrosity that, if it ever spoke, would cause the extinction of all life. So, the perfect pet for a vampire Luna Lovegood. Only this one isn't albino, or aquatic.**


	5. Chapter 4: On the Goals and Aspirations

**CHAPTER 4:**

 **ON THE GOALS AND ASPIRATIONS OF THE PUDDING CLUB**

Hermione was sitting down on a chair in the Pudding Club's main meeting room, along with the others. "Well," she remarked, "that was singularly unpleasant. Novel, but unpleasant." She looked down at her body, which, while attractive before, had become even more so. Her bushy hair had become rather more manageable. She looked beautiful, even more than she had at the Yule Ball, Luna thought (having been sent pictures by Ginny), and she wondered whether Hermione was bisexual. That way, it would be sharing in more ways than one. Ooh, she could make the leadership of the Pudding Club a triumvirate then! Luna as the strangely genius Id, Harry as the Ego, and Hermione as the Superego. Freud would shit himself at such a thought.

"Are you feeling all right?" Harry asked. He had refrained from looking at Hermione's memories as a courtesy, afraid that he might stumble upon some private scene or other, according to him.

"As much as I can, having become a Nosferatu," Hermione said. "I have to admit, this was one of the reasons why I was tempted to become one. Murnau's Law of Vampiric Aesthetics."

"Pardon?"

"Simply put," Luna said, "because vampires are predators of humans, being more attractive helps lure them to us. It's not a watertight rule, there are many vampires who look plain, or look like Count Orlok(1). But Harry got ripped, Hermione and Tonks got full makeovers… Of course, I'm still a little younger than you two, but once I age to the optimal age, I'm gonna be knocking them dead."

"Probably literally," Hermione muttered. Louder, she asked, "So, what next?"

"I'm glad you asked, Hermione!" Luna said cheerfully, before she went over to a wall, and spun part of it, revealing a hidden whiteboard. On it was a bizarre list…

 _1\. TURN HARRY POTTER AND HERMIONE GRANGER INTO VAMPIRES_

 _2\. RAID AZKABAN AND FEED ON MARKED DEATH EATERS (YUMMY!)_

 _3\. STICK IT SIDEWAYS TO VOLDEMORT, DUMBLEDORE, AND MINISTRY_

 _4\. ?_

 _5\. PROFIT!_

"It's time for Step 2 of our Nosferatu Operational Masterplan. That spells NOM. Don't want a repeat of the SPEW fiasco."

"Fuck you, that was a good idea, making a Society for Promoting Elvish Welfare!" Hermione snapped. Then, after realising what she had said, she yelled at herself, "Language, Hermione! I knew becoming a vampire would loosen my inhibitions, but I didn't think it'd be this bad!"

"It's not so bad," Tonks said. "Just view it as being mildly buzzed."

"But I'm underaged!"

"Doesn't stop some students at Hogwarts from smuggling in booze," Tonks shrugged. "Anyway, I've heard worse language from Third Years, believe me. Some of it I was using, and my Mum chewed me out for that."

"Order in the court!" Luna called out. "I call for order, obedience, and ice cream, with sprinkles!"

"I'd prefer treacle tart," Harry said.

Luna chuckled. Oh, she was so glad she had gotten him out of Dumbledore's clutches. Luna knew that Dumbledore wasn't the kindly old grandfather figure he made himself out to be. What better way for a true Dark Lord to disguise himself than as an eccentric grandfather figure and who, by stealth, false humility and diffidence, had attained three of the highest offices in Magical Britain? He wasn't all-powerful, true, but that was the thing. He didn't need to appear all-powerful. There were, after all, many kinds of power.

Luna could see sideways in time, and while in many realities, Dumbledore was a genuinely decent person, albeit a manipulative man who was blinkered to many, though not all, of his faults (and those of others), unfortunately, this particular iteration of Luna Lamia Lovegood was living in the reality where he was an utter twat. But then again, that was going to make tearing down his carefully-orchestrated plans and his so-called Greater Good all the more enjoyable.

"So, we are planning a raid of Azkaban?" Hermione asked. "And we intend to deal with the Death Eaters there."

"Yep," Luna said.

"Got dibs on Aunt Bella," Tonks said, licking her lips. "That sadistic bitch's got it coming."

Hermione frowned. "Well, is there another reason why we're raiding Azkaban? I mean, reducing Voldemort's forces while increasing our own as familiars is one thing, that's obvious, but it can't be as simple as that. I don't like the idea of familiars either. Too much like House Elves."

"Well, let me answer your qualms in reverse order. House Elves exist in a symbiotic relationship, gaining magic and such from their masters. They were bred that way as drudges, not by wizards, but by the Fey. Turning Death Eaters into familiars is not the same thing. If the situation were reversed, they would make you their slave if they didn't kill you. Probably their sex slave. This way, their lives are of use to you, keeping you alive in situations you normally wouldn't be," Luna said. "And you are right. We're going to cast the Dark Mark once we raid Azkaban."

Hermione thought about this, before a smile of revelation came across her face. "A false flag operation! Fudge denied that Voldemort is back, so if the Death Eaters at Azkaban suddenly disappear with the Dark Mark seen overhead…it'll make him look like an idiot."

Tonks snorted. "Not that he needs that much effort to look like one. When we got you and the Dursleys, Harry, I used vampiric hypnosis on the Dursleys to have them travel to a certain point. I then used a Portkey. The car's been Vanished. I also cast the Dark Mark at the Dursley house after Apparating there. It ought to muddy things somewhat. Believe it or not, Mad-Eye learned how to cast it back during the last war as misdirection, and he taught me before he went to Hogwarts to teach. Well, except Sirius told me that that was apparently an impostor."

"Dumbledore will be filling his pants with semi-digested Lemon Sherbets when he realises you aren't at the Dursleys," Luna chuckled. "And Fudge will fudge his own pants when he hears of the Dark Mark. He wants to deny that Voldemort is back, so when the Dark Mark is over your old house, Harry…"

Harry snickered at that. After what he learned of Dumbledore, the thought of giving Dumbledore and Fudge grief appealed to him. "So, are we working to overthrow the Ministry?"

"Not exactly, just Fudge's administration and the Death Eaters and their allies lining his and their pockets," Tonks said. "Quite frankly, as long as the next Minister is competent and fairly incorruptible, our job is done. Well, once Dumbledore and Voldemort are out of the way."

"Why is Dumbledore the way he is, anyway?" Harry asked. "I don't get it."

"I know, it's hard. He's good at crafting an image, Harry," Tonks said.

"He wasn't always evil," Luna said. "Few are born evil, and even fewer believe they themselves are evil. Dumbledore believes that only he is the epitome of good and light in Magical Britain. He had a thirst for power from a young age, one that led him to allying with one Gellert Grindlewald. Apparently they were lovers. But they became enemies. And you know how that went. Their duel during the Second World War is the stuff of legend, and Dumbledore was, by all accounts, broken by the experience as much as his vanquished foe. But then came the rise of Voldemort, and his followers. And Dumbledore realised that, in the wake of being named Grindlewald's conqueror, he had been given much in the way of power. A power he was loath to give up. He used the Order of the Phoenix to protect his political allies…and let those who'd fallen out of favour with him get killed. He used laws to get a hold of the money of those killed where he could, partly to fund the Order and pay off some of his lackeys, but also to line his own pockets. He believes that he is the be-all and end-all of virtue in Magical Britain, that only he knows what the Greater Good should be. He's willing to keep what he believes is the moral high ground, even if it is high on a mountain of corpses. Which would be a waste of good blood, and life."

The silence that fell was pretty heavy. Eventually, Luna said, "TL;DR version, Dumbledore's a hypocritical Machiavellian pile-riddled arsehole. Of course, the same thing could be said about Voldemort, bar the Machiavellian bit."

Tonks then said, "When you think about it, Dumbledore's set himself up as king in everything but name. In Muggle terms, he's both Speaker in the Parliament, as well as Secretary-General of the UN, and while he's in danger of losing those titles, those of Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump, even without them, he has a major sphere of influence. But on the other hand, just eroding his power base will only strengthen Voldemort. Voldemort is afraid of Dumbledore's power, even if he won't admit it. That's why I cast the Dark Mark back at your house, Harry. It'll put more pressure on Fudge."

"It'll also cause confusion in Voldemort's ranks," Luna said with a smile. "Chaos! Confusion! Calamity! Cake!"

"Cake?"

"The cake is not a lie," Tonks said. "Luna makes the best chocolate cakes. Well, that you can have and not suffer from dangerous hyperglycaemia. She calls it Genocide by Chocolate(2). That stuff actually causes you to repel Dementors almost as much as a Patronus. So we'll be each having a small slice before we head to Azkaban."

The thought of a Dementor-repelling chocolate cake made Harry drool. Even Hermione looked like she wanted it, and she wasn't fond of sweets, partly due to her dentist parents.

"After Azkaban, we will be squashing a certain toad."

Tonks winced. "Little Luna here means the Umbitch. Dolores 'Hem, Hem' Umbridge."

Luna nodded. "You know your Aunt Marge, Harry? Imagine the child she would have if she had sex with a toad, one that gives neon-pink cardigans, kitten plates, and throat-clearing a bad name. Only, instead of being a dog-breeder, she's a Batrachian Bitch…in a position of governmental power. She likes to remind people that she's the Senior Undersecretary to Fudge."

Harry blinked. "…Okay, but you put the mental image of Marge having sex…with a toad…into my head. Can I have a Memory Charm for that, please?"

"Nope," Luna said cheerfully. "Anyway, Umbridge is a bitch, pure and simple. Don't know whether she's a Death Eater, but she's probably a groupie at least. Actually, Hermione, I'll let you eat her. She hates Muggleborns with a passion, and smart ones in particular."

"…Will I need mouthwash afterwards?" Hermione asked.

Luna chucked a bottle of Listerine at Hermione, who caught it. And then blinked. "Okay…I'm still getting used to superhuman reflexes. Hammer Horror got it wrong."

"So did _Twilight_ ," Luna muttered. On seeing their looks, she said, "Long story. Unfortunately, doing anything to the author before they're published will cause a curse to be made upon the perpetrator by diehard _Twilight_ fans who also know how to use retroactive time-travelling curses. Curse you, stupid magical Sparklepire fangirls…I will get you back, _somehow(_ _3)_."

In the silence that followed, Tonks said, "Believe me, that's far from the weirdest thing she's said. Doesn't even make the top ten."

" _Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit_ ," Luna said, poking her tongue out.

"What did she say?" Harry asked.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "She said 'there's no great wisdom that doesn't have a touch of madness'. I've been studying Latin to see if I can do my own spells. Anyway, I have one thing to say to you, Luna. _Omnia dicta fortiora si dicta Latina_. Which means, everything sounds more impressive in Latin. And that's why it's painful to hear wizards mangle it when we do spells. I mean, Expelliarmus?"

" _Si non confectus, non reficiat_ ," Luna said with a fang-filled smirk. "And yes, I have read Terry Pratchett(4)."

"Of course you have," Hermione said. "You'd be Magrat Garlick when you grow up."

"By which you mean Queen of a country, and full of unexpected awesome moments!" Luna grinned. "But I'm living that now. Now…are we ready to show the sheeple and the would-be wolves what real fucking predators are like?"

"Fuck the hell _yes_ ," Tonks hissed. "So, we up for hitting up Azkaban for a takeaway meal tomorrow?"

"Yep."

* * *

Cake wasn't on the mind of Sirius Black, who had been trying to rebuff Dumbledore's demands to use his current hideout at 12 Grimmauld Place as the HQ of the Order of the Phoenix, albeit under a Fidelius. Dumbledore had made some remarks, albeit subtly, about the security of the house if he wasn't there to reinforce them. His wording, while not explicit, hinted that he might tip off the DMLE as to Sirius' location. Sirius merely told Dumbledore to 'bring it', as he would never allow the Order to reside at his ancestral home as long as Snape was part of it. In fact, he refused to be part of the Order unless Dumbledore promised to begin training Harry and tell him the truth, something the old fart prevaricated on, naturally, with his usual ' _I'm older than you, so that means I'm wiser and know better than you_ ' way.

Sirius' gratitude to Dumbledore had run out during that whole Tri-Wizard business, especially when Tonks approached him, having managed to track him down, and told him about what she had learned about as part of the Pudding Club. About Dumbledore's duplicity, something he had suspected for some time. And while adorable little Nymphadora was now a Real Fucking Vampire, well, she was still family, and not the sort of family one loved to hate. No, she was like Bella, if Bella sided with the good guys. Because as dangerous and deadly as the Pudding Club was, Sirius also knew that they were on the right side…well, as far as getting rid of Voldemort and Dumbledore were concerned. The Lovegoods were good people, if odd. Luna becoming the Vampire Queen of Magical Britain was not the strangest thing the family had done. And if the Vampire Queen wanted Harry to become her consort…well, if it meant his godson surviving Voldemort, he was all for it. He was considering whether to become a vampire himself. The main thing holding him back was Remus.

Werewolves and vampires had an infamous rivalry, even outside Muggle fiction. The reason for this was simple: werewolf blood was one of the few bloods of any sentient creature that was utterly lethal to a vampire if ingested. Historically, vampires went on pogroms against werewolves to reduce the possibility of this happening.

While Remus was never one to embrace his inner wolf where he could help it, the pogroms by vampires against werewolves left deep scars, and instinctive hatred of vampires in the werewolf collective unconscious. Sirius was worried about Remus being caught between his loyalty to Dumbledore, his loyalty to Harry, and the werewolf revulsion against vampires.

Which was why he was going to talk to Moony later tonight. Because if Remus decided one way or another to oppose Harry, either because of Dumbledore or his werewolf instincts…then Sirius was frightened he was going to be down another friend…

 **CHAPTER 4 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **So, the Pudding Club is plotting a raid of Azkaban, and Sirius is wondering whether Remus will still be loyal to Harry. That will happen in the next chapter, with Remus' choice…**

 **Wow, I'm surprised at how quickly the viewcount has risen, how popular this fic is already. And grateful, too. Then again, it's probably partly thanks to all those chapters posted at once. That being said, this story already has over a hundred alerts and nearly as many favourites, 3 C2s and over 4.5K views.**

 **Review-answering time! Again, wow, very heartened by the number of reviews. Well, let's get to it, shall we?**

 **Stratos263** **: Getting the Queen involved is such a cliché in some stories like this.**

 **Gabriel Herrol** **: Nice new avatar. Anyway, Dementors and vampires consider each other competition, but the nature of the familiars within vampires make them poisonous to Dementors. Of course, Luna's cake helps matters. But vampires can't take the souls of those already eaten by Dementors: they have to feed directly on the original person. As for the vampire/werewolf thing, see above. Vampires in general have resistance to magic, save for fire magic, particularly Fiendfyre. And no, one thing that hasn't carried over from** ** _Hellsing_** **is the necessity of a fledgling needing to be a virgin before becoming a vampire. That being said, Harry, Hermione and Luna are obviously virgins.**

 **Mangahero18** **: I found I couldn't write this in anything but a darkly comic manner. You don't like it? Don't read. And I vehemently disagree with it being the lowest form of humour. That is scatological humour…most of the time.**

 **DZ2** **: I aim to please, and I am glad you enjoyed it, despite it deviating somewhat from, I am sure, your original intentions with your challenge. The Joker's line was meant for you anyway. As for Luna, well, Luna seems to be somewhat detached from reality to a degree anyway. She goes along to the beat of her own drum even in canon, so that opens up a lot of possibilities. And it's less of a couldn't-care-less attitude as much as a 'I do what I want, you have a problem, deal with it' attitude. She's less apathetic than simply self-indulgent, doing things on whims. While she is getting rid of the Death Eaters etc because it is the right thing to do, it doesn't necessarily follow that she and her fellow Pudding Club members are paragons of morality. They're monsters, just monsters with just enough humanity to do what is right. But there's also a slight element of fatalism here: Luna turned Harry partly because her seer abilities told her to, albeit to give them both the best chance for survival.**

 **Mini-rant about Luna: In my Harry/Luna stories (which are generally set after Hogwarts), she usually is the one dragging Harry into situations, like the Fifth Holy Grail War in** ** _Perils of Magical Investigative Journalism_** **(and has Zelretch and the Brunested sisters as adoptive family, something I put into the backstory of** ** _Gorgon and Thanatos_** **). Even when she isn't, she's more than willing to do strange things. After being infected with a variant of the T-Veronica virus in** ** _Henry Ashford and the Goblet of Fire_** **, she promptly uses her newly fireproof skin to toast marshmallows in a fireplace, while holding onto them with her bare hands. And there's the fact that she can be friends with Alucard in** ** _Haemophilia_** **. Luna is one of those characters whom it's an utter delight to write, simply because she does not act like a normal person, and doesn't give a crap about it. She's also handy as a plot device in the form of a character.**

 **Have a Little Feith** **: I didn't know that, and frankly, I care less. Luna just calls it that because she likes pudding, and finds the irony in hiding her vampire club under a seemingly innocuous name highly appealing.**

 **1\. Count Orlok, and Murnau's Law, are references to the silent film** ** _Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror_** **, an unofficial and unauthorised adaptation of** ** _Dracula_** **, directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, a famous German director at the time.**

 **2\. I took this name from Terry Pratchett's novel** ** _Soul Music_** **. While thinking of her late mother (and adoptive daughter of Death) Ysabell, Susan recalls that Ysabell's favourite dish was Genocide by Chocolate.**

 **3\. Based on Sasuke's emo catchphrase from** ** _Naruto: The Abridged Comedy Fandub Spoof Series Show_** **. Usually, it's a variation of "Curse you, (X). I will get you back, somehow." Said, incidentally, in one of the most monotonous deadpan voices ever.**

 **4\. The motto is that of Lord Havelock Vetinari, the mostly-benevolent but still ruthless dictator of Ankh-Morpork from the Discworld novels. It means 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.**


	6. Chapter 5: On the Advisability of

**CHAPTER 5:**

 **ON THE ADVISABILITY OF ALLOWING A WEREWOLF TO JOIN A VAMPIRE COVEN**

Remus Lupin, werewolf, Marauder, and rather diffident man, was understandably shocked when his oldest (surviving) friend Sirius Black told him the news. That Harry was now a vampire, and the consort of the Vampire Queen of Magical Britain. And who was Luna Lovegood.

Remus remembered her from his time teaching DADA. Intelligent girl (well, Ravenclaws generally were), very lateral thinker, something of a fantasist, but a harmless one, albeit one who believed in her father's conspiracy theories published in _The Quibbler_. Deduced that he was a werewolf quite quickly, and approached him privately, saying she didn't care. When he was forced to leave with his status being outed by Snape, she actually intercepted him, and gave him a hug.

He found it rather hard to reconcile that dotty girl with the thought of a Queen of Vampires. Though he could understand why she called her organisation the Pudding Club.

As Sirius correctly guessed, Remus' conflict on the matter was a three-way struggle. He felt utterly grateful to Dumbledore for allowing him to even attend Hogwarts, at a time when sentiment against werewolves was on the rise (he was lucky his father had covered up Fenrir Greyback's attack on him), as well as to allow him to teach. And those sort of debts tended to be exploited. His werewolf instincts, even those he buried deep within him, were snarling at him not to give any help to those bloodsucking leeches, to ensure they suffered a prolonged demise. But Remus was something of an outcast in most werewolf packs due to his alliance with Dumbledore, not to mention his father's own comments on werewolves.

But his loyalty to the Marauders, and to the memory of the Potters, was also strong. Of late, he felt some of his respect for James Potter lessen. The Marauders, or rather, James and Sirius, were frequently bullies, plain and simple, and while Sirius had come to terms with that, Remus wasn't convinced that James had ever done so. But Remus had nothing but the utmost respect for Lily, and he had been the sole member of the Marauders she would even speak with on civil terms.

One thing the Marauders were supposed to be united on was the care of Harry. Remus would have done so, but Dumbledore had pointed out that if word got out that a werewolf was caring for the saviour of Magical Britain, said werewolf would be immediately slaughtered. And given the implications Sirius was making about Dumbledore, in retrospect, that held the air of a subtle threat.

"Why are you so opposed to him, Padfoot?" Remus asked.

Sirius snorted. "Let's list things off. I can maybe understand him not wanting to give me a trial, if he really believed I was the traitor. Emotions were running high, and my little substitution trick with Peter backfired badly. But when he was finally told of what happened, what did he do? Nothing. He sent Harry and Hermione to rescue me. Couldn't he have, say, opened a motion in the Wizengamot to look at my case? Played on the fear of Purebloods getting thrown into Azkaban willy-nilly? Have me interrogated with Veritaserum? No, he didn't. And while there could be an innocent explanation for it, my gut tells me otherwise. Dumbledore wants to use this house as a base of operations." He indicated the dark and dreary environs of 12 Grimmauld Place. "He also sent Nymphadora into vampire territory, and then started blackmailing her when she got turned. Vampires are treated about as well as werewolves in our society, as well you know, and if it got out publicly…I mean, _The Quibbler_ claims the DMLE are full of vampires, especially Scrimgeour, but imagine if a vampire was found to be in the Aurors. Nymphadora's told Bones and Scrimgeour, and have apparently told them of my innocence on the QT. Got kicked out from the Aurors, at least officially, but unofficially, she's keeping an eye on the Pudding Club for them. They don't know how high up she is, though."

"They haven't done anything about it," Remus said. "Then again, without Peter, without Wormtail, there's little proof. And the mood of most of the Ministry is to have you Kissed on sight, so having you undergo an interrogation with Veritaserum is out."

"Oh, Dumbledore could manage it with political influence…but he doesn't want to waste any poltical capital on something he doesn't want to spend it on. You see what I mean, Moony? He cultivates obligations to him, ties people to him. He spoke up for Snivellous at the end of the war, probably to have a pet Death Eater as a spy in Voldemort's camp, despite the fact that, for all his expertise in Potions, he's a shitty teacher with the personality of a toxic potions dump. Oh, and Snivellous attacks Harry and his friends all the time. If Dumbledore really gave a damn about education rather than his little Machiavellian games, he would replace Snivellous."

Remus opened his mouth to object, but found he couldn't. "And Minerva…"

"Thinks the sun shines out of his arse. Given her sour expression, she probably sucks up his arse so much, she can taste the Lemon Sherbets. She's not bad, she's just too enamoured with his greatness. Out of the old Order, aside from yourself, the only one I can really trust is Mad-Eye, and he only really trusts himself."

"Not even the Weasleys?"

"Their youngest boy Ron abandoned Harry out of jealousy when his name came out of the Goblet," Sirius said. "We may never have been without flaws, but we never abandoned each other out of jealousy."

"No, just anger and suspicion over being Death Eaters," Remus remarked archly, remembering how the others distanced themselves from him during the previous war. Sirius winced.

"Yeah, but that was reasonable fear and anger. I was stupid enough to believe Peter was harmless, that he was a perfect Secret Keeper. Whereas Ron, well, he was immature, and he never approached Harry until after the First Task. Three and a half weeks. We resolved our spats at school within a week at most. I don't think he was being truly malicious, I just think he's a gold-digger who wanted some of the reflected fame from Harry. He's all take and little, if any, give. I might be prejudiced there, though. But you hear things like, well, remember how Molly joked about using a Love Potion to snare Arthur's attention? Anyway, that's not my point. I'm going out on a limb here, trusting you with what Harry has become. If you don't like it, or you're going to go to Dumbledore with your tail between your legs, then not only is our friendship over, but I will Obliviate you so hard, you'll forget your toilet training. But if you want to stand by Harry, and help him against Voldemort, as well as anyone else who would exploit him or see him dead, then we're going to be helping the Pudding Club."

It shouldn't have been so hard to make the decision. But he was caught between three impulses. They wrestled to and fro, before finally, Remus made the decision.

"I'll stand with him, Padfoot. Vampire or not, I'll stand with him. But for his sake, and yours, and for his parents."

Sirius sighed in relief. "Going to make a vow to that effect?"

"Of course. I'd rather die than let him be unprotected again."

"Well, we'd rather make the Death Eaters and any other enemies die first," Sirius chuckled darkly.

* * *

Harry was actually a little disappointed that he wasn't sleeping in a coffin. Sleeping for so long in the cupboard, surprisingly, gave him a slight case of claustrophilia. He actually liked sleeping in smaller spaces.

Not that he hated sleeping on a good bed. To the contrary, it was luxury upon luxury. But he was still mildly disappointed.

The four key members of the Pudding Club were sleeping in a large bedroom, each with a bed to themselves. Harry still baulked slightly at sharing a bedroom with a girl, let alone three of them (well, two girls and a young woman), but that was partly inexperience and embarrassment. While being a vampire heightened desires, like sexual desire, hunger (for blood in particular), possessions, fledglings, familiars, etc, he was still a teenaged boy who wasn't quite sure what to do. Luna had also declared a moratorium on the fun stuff for the triumvirate until they were 16. Not that vampires put much stock in either morality or the laws of mortals unless they wanted to, but she had made a promise to her father. Plus, it meant that they could bring in Tonks if she was still unattached.

Of course, once they hit 16, all bets were off.

Hermione was surprisingly open to a triumvirate with Harry and Luna, in both power and relationship terms. Hermione and Luna had spent much of the night before they went to sleep engaged in debates about magicryptozoology, House Elves rights, conspiracy theories, favourite foods, and who they intended to kill and how. Once she learned of how potent seer's blood was, Hermione realised that part of Luna's eccentricity was due to that. That, and Luna had been delighted to hear that Hermione was bisexual.

Then again, even though he only knew her for a short period of time, Harry could only classify Luna as pansexual.

They rose in the afternoon the next day, a nice compromise between the usually nocturnal nature of the vampire, and the still diurnal natures of Harry and Hermione. Technically, vampires didn't need sleep anyway, but Luna kept the habit, as had Tonks. They just slept whenever they felt like it.

Harry rose, in time to see what had to be Tonks getting up, dressed in her pyjamas. He blinked after a moment. She didn't have her punky hair at the moment. In fact, she looked a lot like…

"Yeah, I know, worst case of bed hair ever, and bed face to boot," Tonks said. "You've seen a picture of her, right? My Aunt Bella?"

Harry blinked, before he said, "Pensieve memory, actually. And you're right, you look like Bellatrix Lestrange…if she was sane and not a Death Eater. And had a makeover."

"Yeah, I take a lot after my mother in looks. She looks quite a bit like her sister," Tonks said, shifting her hair and face to her usual appearance. "Believe me, a lot of people reckon she's the same. She's a lawyer, actually. Went into Slytherin, but she's been the best mother to me." After a pause, she scowled, before amending it to, "Aside from calling me Nympha-fucking-dora."

"How does she feel about you being a vampire? Does she know?"

Tonks snorted. "Of course she does. Her teacher in law was a vampire. You met him yesterday. Newman. He's lived long enough to see laws changed and drafted both in Muggle and the magical world. He once said that he enjoys the wailing and gnashing of teeth he gets when he outsmarts some young buck. His words, not mine: he used that to describe Abraxas Malfoy, and old Abraxas was 62 at the time. And a friend of his was my big sister Genevieve(1)."

"She's my big sister too," Luna said sleepily as she rose, yawning, and showing a maw a theropod dinosaur would have pissed themselves on seeing. She was still clutching her Cthulhu doll.

"Yeah, she was the one who finally turned me. I'm a bit annoyed about that, but better her than anyone else," Tonks said. "Though how you got her to follow you...she's more powerful than the vampire who called himself Dracula, after all."

"Silly Nymphomania, she doesn't follow me. She just lets me be Queen of Vampires because it amuses us both. She doesn't like being a leader, just herself, a lone wolf," Luna said. "In any case, she's off in Europe, dealing with any covens who might wish to help Voldemort. She promised to send postcards."

Hermione, who had sat up groggily in bed, blinked. "Who're you talking about?"

"She's a vampire who was once one of Joan of Arc's soldiers," Luna said. "Let's just put it this way: Dumbledore wants her dead because she ate some of Grindlewald's followers during the Second World War, not to mention breaking his nose again, and she helped the real van Helsing develop a proper manual for battling rogue vampires. She's way more powerful than virtually any vampire still alive in Europe. And still looks sexy to boot."

"She generally doesn't turn people either," Tonks said. "She only turned me because Luna asked her to. That, and, well, we had a bit of a thing," she admitted, blushing slightly. "When I got accepted into Auror training, well…"

"Had a date?" Harry asked. He wasn't oblivious, he was just sparing Tonks embarrassment.

"A few," Tonks said, her blush deepening ever-so-slightly.

"Metamorphagi tend to be more fluid in their attitudes to things," Luna said. "Including sexuality."

"Luna!"

"What? It's a compliment," Luna said without any remorse whatsoever. "Anyway, you are older than me. Though Genevieve is even older. Would that make her a cougar if she's over five centuries older?"

"LUNA LAMIA LOVEGOOD!" Tonks snapped.

"NYMPHADORA LIBRA TONKS!" Luna shouted back.

"HARRY JAMES POTTER!" Hermione yelled, if only to get into the swing of things.

"HERMIONE JEAN GRANGER!" Harry roared, catching on.

"Rocky!" Luna gasped in faux-dismay. Which caused them all, save for Harry, to crack up. Then again, Harry had never watched _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_. He had heard of it, but hadn't watched it. Noticing his bemused expression, Luna said, "Okay, next movie night we're doing, we're watching it! And in costume! I'll be Janet in her underwear, Hermione will be Magenta, Tonks will be Columbia, and Harry…well, I think Riff-Raff or Brad will be best. I think Daddy will love dressing up as Frank-N-Furter…or Rocky."

"…Why do I have the feeling that I'm about to enter a new circle of Hell?" Harry asked.

"Hey, you'll love the music, Harry," Tonks said. "But that's for another time. We have a prison raid to undertake."

"Hey, let's stage the musical with our familiars later!" Luna yelped in excitement, standing on her bed and jumping on it. "Make them do the Time Warp!"

Hermione facepalmed. "Dear Merlin…" She then realised something. Three of those present suddenly sniffed. They could smell the smell of chocolate cake…except this was no ordinary chocolate cake smell. This was the sort of smell that would levitate and lure people towards it, even outside of a cartoon.

Then, the door opened, and Luna…another Luna skipped merrily in, carrying a small chocolate cake that nonetheless managed to be the archetype, nay, the _apotheosis_ of all chocolate cakes. Harry felt he was getting cavities just by looking at it. "Here you go!" the second Luna said with a smile. "Special delivery of chocolate cake by Time Turner! By the way, past Luna, start cooking it, okay?"

"Oh, poo. My future self gets to have all the cake," Luna, the original, pouted.

"You'll have it soon enough, and you get to lick the bowl, anyway," future Luna said.

"You do raise a good point," Luna said, cheered again, and she skipped out, giving her future self a high five as she passed.

The remaining Luna looked at the others, who were staring at her in shock. "What? The Blinovitch Limitation Effect is bollocks anyway(2). The universe won't go boom when we touch. Just as well. There's a lot of things we can get up to when we're temporally duplicated. Now, eat up. We've got a prison to raid, and Death Eaters to eat…"

 **CHAPTER 5 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **Yeah, the scene at the end sort of did run away from me. Anyway, I decided, despite it being forbidden by DZ2's challenge, to have Remus allied with Harry. He isn't going to be shipped with Tonks any time soon, though.**

 **The whole think about shipping Tonks with Geneviève Dieudonné (for further details, see below) was sort of by accident, because I wanted more vampire references. I originally thought of Tonks as becoming part of a potential harem, and she may yet still be, but the thought of pairing Tonks with one of my favourite literary vampires is too appealing.**

 **Now, before I start answering reviews, DZ2 was kind enough to give this fic a shout-out in their latest story,** ** _Harry Potter: Phantom Lord_** **. Without their challenge, this story wouldn't be here. Now, their stories can be pretty dark, contain quite a lot of bashing, and take to canon with a cricket bat, but that's the joy of fanfic. Therefore, I will recommend a few of their stories, ones that I have personally enjoyed, though your mileage may vary…**

 ** _Appetite for Power_** **: Using a concept from the manga** ** _Fairy Tail_** **, it depicts Harry as being capable of 'eating' elemental powers and using them to gain strength. My personal favourite of DZ2's works so far.**

 ** _Harry Potter: Sorcerer Supreme_** **: Lily survives (albeit in a coma for years), and Harry lives with the Grangers. This one has a lot of potential, and, despite a rather dark twist when Lily wakes, is one of DZ2's lighter works.**

 ** _Child of the Phoenix_** **: A crossover with** ** _X-Men_** **, where Harry learns that he's actually the time-displaced child of Scott Summers and Jean Grey.**

 ** _A Promise That I Keep_** **: One of many time travel fics, with Weasley-bashing. And while I'm not fond of the Hermione-bashing in it, it's still quite promising so far, with adorable Luna-shipping.**

 **While I'm at it, I'll also recommend a couple of other fics. I mentioned Silently Watches'** ** _Faery Heroes_** **, based on Paladeus'** ** _Champions of Lilith_** **time travel fic challenge. If you don't mind a metric fuckton of bashing, it's good, and certainly one of the best stories based on said challenge. I also like 's** ** _Tempest of the Fae_** **.**

 **Next, just to add some insanity as spice, I would recommend the Harry Potter/** ** _Batman Begins_** **crossover oneshot** ** _Of Lipstick, Blood and Lunacy_** **by EEstelle, where a pre-** ** _The Dark Knight_** **Joker meets Bellatrix Lestrange.**

 **Finally, some Harry Potter and** ** _Hellsing_** **crossovers. This fic is a spiritual successor to my own fic** ** _Haemophilia_** **, and that was inspired originally by sakurademonalchemist's** ** _It's in the Blood_** **. Sadly, that fic hasn't gone beyond three chapters in her** ** _Short Story Drabbles_** **, but if you want to see what she wrote, then head to chapter 123 of** ** _Short Story Drabbles_** **. And some of this story was not only inspired by** ** _Hellsing Ultimate Abridged_** **, but a fanfic called** ** _Harry Potter and the Endless Night_** **by The Sage of Toads, which is a pseudo-prequel to** ** _Hellsing Ultimate Abridged_** **. If you want humour and horror, with Harry and Hermione kicking arse along with Hellsing (and Draco wanting to become Integra's butler), then give it a go.**

 **Review-answering time!** **Stratos263** **: Offhand, there is sakurademonalchemist's** ** _Dusk and Dawn_** **, and** ** _Save Yourselves_** **by Havens Run. In some favourites of my favourite authors, I've noticed a fic called** ** _Long Live the Queen_** **by offsides. And I alluded to the Queen intervening in** ** _Haemophilia_** **. Also, while Dumbledore's actions in canon can be spun in quite a villainous way, I usually prefer to reconstruct Dumbledore as a heavily flawed but ultimately good man. I only bash Dumbledore, or at least make him evil, if it suits the story.**

 **Spaceduck the Majestic** **: Mostly, they will use their bare hands or their wands. You know, tear people apart like Seras in the midst of a blood rage. They'll also use wandless magic: I intend for Luna or one of the others to have a scene not unlike Dark Willow…complete with "Bored now". As for the clothing, well, I'm still yet to decide, but for the Azkaban raid, they each wear Naruto's jumpsuit and a beaglepuss. Nope, I'm not making that up. It's Luna's idea.**

 **Reishin Amara** **: It's something I thought up while writing the initial chapters to the sequel for** ** _Is Your Great-Aunt an AI?!_** **I felt there had to be a little more to the problem. Making them specially-bred drudges by the Fey does help remove some (but not all) culpability from the wizards. Dunno if someone's already done that, though…**

 **MilandaAnza** **: You'll get your wish.**

 **DZ2** **: Probably wouldn't make the Joker sane, but I appreciate the sentiment. I have actually read** ** _Twilight_** **, and I found it merely mediocre and boring rather than truly abysmal, but I haven't bothered to read more of the series.** ** _Twi-shite_** **is my personal nickname for it, though, but it's a common nickname. And I was going for that sort of reaction with the description of Dolores Umbridge's 'parentage': I got a similar reaction in my now-abandoned and archived story** ** _Resident Evil: Basilisk_** **, where Ricardo Irving is described as looking like Umbridge and Pettigrew's offspring…with Harry then immediately regretting thinking of the two having sex.**

 **Angel Arcano92** **: Might not happen. We're having wandless magic, wands, and brutal hand to hand. Guns may not make it in. If someone's going to use a very big cannon like Seras' Harkonnen, then it's going to be Luna. Can you imagine her wielding the Harkonnen?**

 **Have a Little Feith** **: No, Murnau was more a silent films director (** ** _Nosferatu_** **was from 1922), and the Wilhelm Scream was first heard in the 1951 film** ** _Distant Drums_** **. And while vampires can still get sugar highs (and crashes), they can't get cavities or diabetes, due to being able to regenerate the affected parts (teeth and pancreases, respectively). I wasn't snippy, by the way, or at least that wasn't my intention. I just don't care that the Pudding Club is a euphemism for pregnancy. I have enough of those to last me a lifetime. Euphemisms, I mean.**

 **JDS62** **: Harry won't be like Alucard as much: that's Luna's job. He and Hermione will be more of the straight man and woman to Luna and (to a lesser degree) Tonks' insanity. Oh, he'll channel a lot of Alucard's more scarier moments when the time is right, though…oh, and I hate blueberries. So there. :P**

 **1\. Geneviève Dieudonné, as well as Newman, are references to Kim Newman and his recurring vampire character, Geneviève Dieudonné, who is a main character in** ** _Anno Dracula_** **(and appears in other works), which incidentally I wholeheartedly recommend. It's a bit** ** _League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_** **in that it tries to cram in a lot of Victorian fictional characters, but it's still great. And as she is implied to have been a lover of Carmilla and definitely was a lover of Beauregard, it's not too much of a stretch to make her bi, as she seems to be canonically so. However, she will be a background character, and won't appear, except maybe in cameos.**

 **2\. The Blinovitch Limitation Effect was a series of laws often mentioned in** ** _Doctor Who_** **, the most dramatic of which was that past and future selves of the same person (save for Time Lords) should not come into contact, otherwise, there can be an explosion from a short-out of temporal energy. This happens at the end of** ** _Mawdryn Undead_** **when two versions of the Brigadier meet, but not only do they survive, the explosion actually helped save the Doctor.**


	7. Chapter 6: On the Trials of Obtaining a

**CHAPTER 6:**

 **ON THE TRIALS OF OBTAINING A TAKEAWAY MEAL FROM A PRISON FORTRESS**

"You said you had seer's blood, right?" Harry asked as they drove their boat towards Azkaban. "So why didn't you foresee Voldemort's resurrection, or Cedric's death? Why didn't you do anything about those?"

Luna pursed her lips. She had been doing so already at the helm, albeit in order to whistle a jaunty sea-shanty. But now, it was more pensive. "Being a seer is not as easy as it sounds, Harry. You know Trelawney?"

"Of course. She's a fraud…mostly."

"Well, she has some seer's blood, but not much. But…we don't just see the future, we see past, present, and alternatives as well. Sorting them out is pretty hard, the human mind isn't equipped for multi-dimensional thinking, beyond three dimensions of space and one in time. Not only that, but we can't choose how we see the future, or a possible future," Luna said. "Divination at Hogwarts is mostly hogwash. You should try reading _Dune_ some time, it has interesting and not inaccurate discourses on the nature of prescience(1). The upshot was, I didn't know Cedric was going to die, and as I was busy killing a vampire who wanted to join Voldemort, I couldn't intervene anyway. Most of my visions of the future were centred around you, Harry, as my future consort and mate. So you'll forgive me for having the prescience equivalent of tunnel vision."

Harry nodded, looking rather glum. Not that this was an inappropriate state of affairs, given that they were approaching Azkaban. "So, how are we dealing with the Dementors? I mean, other than through that bloody delicious cake?"

"Dementors and vampires are competitors for the same food source," Luna said. "Normally, this would be a problem, but vampire souls are tainted, as far as Dementors are concerned."

"I don't find that reassuring," Hermione said. "Isn't there anything that can kill them?"

"Not unless you want to let unspeakable horrors from beyond into our dimension," Luna said. "Now, as for the human guards, let Tonks and I handle them. You two are relatively new vampires, so you won't be able to hypnotise them as easily. Once we're ready, we'll divvy up the spoils, and then make it look like a breakout. Keep in mind that, while we may be tempted to eat them then and there, the longer we linger, the longer we run the risk of running afoul of the Dementors or anyone else."

"The Dementors could tell the others who was here," Harry said. "I seem to recall that the Dementors could communicate, and they were talking about what Sirius was doing in his cell after he escaped."

"Hence the chocolate cake," Luna said. "Do you know why it's such a potent antidote to the effects of Dementors? It's not just the comforting sensation of eating chocolate…chocolate actually erodes their aura. It's like garlic to fictional vampires. They like to stay as far away as possible. But it won't last long, and we may have human guards or visitors to deal with. And as Dementors sense thoughts, they won't be able to tell our identities, beyond us being vampires, and even then, they'd have to get close enough to be affected by the chocolate to do so. And the popular perception of vampires is that we would be allied to Voldemort. Casting the Dark Mark will just muddy the waters."

"Yeah, but wouldn't Voldemort kill the guards?" Hermione pointed out.

"Which is why we're going to merely make it seem like he blew open the prison from the outside, and took who he wanted," Luna said. "By the time anyone pokes any holes in the story, it'll be too late. Besides, most wizards are idiots. Then again, foolishness is not the exclusive province of wizards and witches."

"Got that right," Hermione said.

"Yeah. Remember Sirius," Tonks said.

* * *

In the end, it was surprisingly simple. So much so that Harry was waiting for things to go badly wrong. Luna had them dress up in what she called 'super stealthy vampire ninja outfits', which were all jumpsuits in an eye-searing, 'target practise' orange, and had them don Groucho Marx glasses, or beaglepusses, fake glasses with a big conk and moustache. Luna claimed that the costumes and glasses had Disillusionment Charms on them (amongst other things), while Tonks made some snide remark about how they looked so outrageous, nobody would believe they were breaking into Azkaban.

Though if they were breaking into St Mungo's mental health section, it was another matter entirely. They'd look like patients there.

Harry was glad that Luna's assertion about chocolate cake repelling Dementors seemed to work. Azkaban was depressing enough without them, all stone walls and metal bars and the damp was everywhere. Somewhere deep within him, he heard Petunia remark sniffily about the décor, while Vernon said that Harry deserved to be locked up in a place like this. Harry promptly gave Vernon Dursley the metaphysical equivalent of a hard kick to the balls. The ensuing howl of pain was music to his ears.

They soon reached the high security wing, and Luna promptly began tearing off cell doors with her bare hands. "One of these, and one of these, and OOH! One of those!" she said, transfiguring Death Eaters into stones which she summoned(2).

Tonks, meanwhile, had gone on ahead, and soon found her target. A vicious grin split her features, and as Harry and Hermione caught up, they soon found out why. "Hello, Aunt Bella," Tonks hissed.

"What's this? Ooh, if it isn't little bitty Nymphadora," came a sickeningly child-like voice. "How is that Blood Traitor whore of a mother of yours? Still sucking muddy cum from your Mudblood daddy's teeny-tiny wand? Then again, the best part of Andy ran down Mummy's thigh."

Hermione wrinkled her nose in disgust. Tonks sighed. "You just pressed the only buttons worse than the Nymphadora button, Aunt Bella. You shouldn't have done that." With a roar, she ripped off the cell door, and dragged what had to be Bellatrix Lestrange out. She certainly looked way more haggard and emaciated than how she appeared to Harry in the Pensieve memory. "I'm not afraid of you anymore, you psychotic bitch. But you should be."

Bellatrix blinked in confusion. "Why should I be afraid of myself?"

After a moment, Tonks said, "Fuck it, I'm eating you." Fangs filled her mouth, and with a roar, she bit down on Bellatrix's neck. The sound that emerged from Bellatrix's mouth was disturbingly orgasmic, as was her expression.

Harry and Hermione decided to help Luna out by tearing open cell doors rather than watch Bellatrix get off on having her blood drunk by her own niece. They also helped Luna subdue the Death Eaters before she and Hermione transfigured them.

A few minutes later, they returned to find Tonks transfiguring the corpse of Bellatrix Lestrange, which had a disturbingly content grin on its face. "I did NOT need the memories of my aunt fucking Voldemort!" she hissed quietly in disgust. "And from her viewpoint! Are we done yet? Only, I want to drink a LOT of Firewhiskey to try and forget that!"

"Nearly," Luna said, before she waved her hand. Part of a nearby wall collapsed inward, exploding into the corridor as if blasted from the outside. "Okay, Nymphie, your turn."

"I swear to whatever deity exists…"

"Oh, thanks for your patronage," Luna said with a smile.

Tonks scowled, before waving her wand. "MORSMORDE!" she yelled, and the familiar image of the Dark Mark appeared in the evening sky.

"Okay, time to make like a library and book it," Luna said.

* * *

A couple of hours later, they were back in the Pudding Club headquarters…which was a series of basements underneath the Rookery, Luna's home (said basements being under a Fidelius). They had just finished their takeaway meal, with Hermione wiping her mouth with her hand as she dumped the body of August Rookwood into the trapdoor. She caught a glimpse of a tentacle snatching the body as it fell. "Thanks for giving me the Unspeakable, Luna," Hermione said. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm glad he was only a murderer, and not a sadistic one at that. His knowledge was actually interesting. Some of the memories of the others, though…"

Harry winced. "Yeah. Believe me, you don't want to see what the Lestranges did. Let's just say that turning Neville's parents into vegetables was their _least_ heinous crime. And don't talk to me about Dolohov, though some of his curses are pretty neat. I'm going to get the vampiric soul-eating equivalent of indigestion if we keep eating Death Eaters."

"And for all of his evil, Rookwood was a brilliant man," Hermione said. "Some of the stuff he saw in the Department of Mysteries…will the Unspeakables employ vampires?"

Luna shrugged. "I dunno, they're pale, nocturnal shut-ins who go about in dark clothing and have a sinister lair filled with things humanity is not meant to understand…they view vampires as competition, not comrades."

"Bugger."

"Oh, they may employ you. But they may also try to vivisect you during the interview."

"Double bugger."

"Vivisect?" Harry asked.

"Like dissection, only you're alive at the time," Luna said cheerfully. "Anaesthetic optional."

"Thank you for that mental image, Luna. I don't know what's going to drive me insane first, the crimes against humanity, morality and good taste by these Death Eaters, or you putting nightmarish images into my head."

"Sanity is overrated," Luna said.

"What I'm worried about is that the whole thing went off with very little hitch," Tonks said. "I mean, aside from getting bad memories that aren't even your own from a bunch of genocidal rapists, paedophiles, and killers. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop before we really begin celebrating."

"Moody taught you well, my Dionysian apprentice," Luna said. "But while there is still a possibility of something going wrong, we have had a success all the same. A few dozen Death Eaters are now our minions, Fudge going to be scared, Voldemort annoyed, and Dumbledore puzzled. STEP TWO OF NOM IS COMPLETE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" After a moment, noticing that nobody was joining in, she said, "What?"

"Luna, what have we told you about creepy laughter that sounds like Mark Hamill on drugs?" Tonks asked.

"That it's the best medicine?"

"No. Laughter is the expression of mirth and joy. We're here to celebrate a successful mission, not kill the Batman," Tonks said(3). "Showing your fangs doesn't help either."

"But making my minions soil themselves in terror is a vital part of being royalty of Dark Creatures," Luna pouted. "I mean, you're not my minions, you're my friends, future lovers, and trusted compatriots, but even so, I need people to practise my evil laughs in front of."

"Wait, wait…lemme try," Harry said, apparently on a whim. Hermione watched as Harry began to chuckle darkly, then laugh in ways that sent shivers down her spine…and oddly enough, made her want him all the more. It was like the evil laughter equivalent of Luna's Genocide by Chocolate.

Luna was staring at him once he had finished. Eventually, she said, "I'd be more annoyed at you upstaging me, but that was _sexy as hell_."

"Down girl," Tonks said. "But seriously, I haven't heard an evil laugh that good since my last Hammer Horror marathon. Christopher Lee, eat your heart out."

"EVIL LAUGHTER COMPETITION!" Luna yelled, pointing to the ceiling. "WHOEVER WINS GETS TO SNOG THE PERSON OF THEIR CHOICE AS PASSIONATELY AS THEY WANT!"

"…Do we need the competition?" Harry asked.

"YES! YOUR QUEEN DEMANDS IT!"

* * *

The next morning, across Magical Britain, a shockwave of fear and loathing spread over Magical Britain, at the speed of owl flight, with a few jumps here and there due to Apparition, Floo calls, and so on.

In the mansion of Lucius Malfoy, Voldemort stared at the paper headlines declaring a breakout in Azkaban, and then looked up at the fearful faces of those followers who were present with an eerily calm expression that nonetheless promised excruciating pain for the next person to catch his attention. When Walden Macnair sneezed, Voldemort instantly used the Cruciatus on him, and didn't stop until Macnair had soiled himself. Well, two minutes after that, anyway.

Incidentally, that was what Fudge did when he was told about the breakout at Azkaban, and the Dark Mark. Thankfully, he was able to go and change his clothes and retain some small shred of dignity without anyone noticing (or so he thought: Umbridge did notice, and noted it down in her mental leverage folder). Still, he could at least spin this in a way that meant he didn't have to buy into those ridiculous claims of Voldemort being back. Blame it on Sirius Black. An easy scapegoat. Now, he should begin stepping up his campaign to discredit Dumbledore and his delusional pawn, not knowing that Harry was free of delusions, and Dumbledore's chains.

Speaking of which, said old man had been calling in a number of favours to reform the Order of the Phoenix, and had been so wrapped up in his annoyance at Sirius refusing him, and going off the grid along with Tonks and Remus, that he didn't notice the monitoring devices on the wards around 4 Privet Drive were fading. At least not until he got his copy of _The Daily Prophet_ , and, in shock, remembered to check them. His instruments indicated that Harry was dead.

He felt ambivalent about that. On the one hand, it meant he didn't have his weapon anymore, a martyr to sacrifice for the Greater Good, and he couldn't get him married into the Weasleys to ensure he didn't need to resort to too much financial acrobatics to get them the Potter monies…once he had taken his rightful share. On the other hand, it meant one less Horcrux, and one less obstacle in his way to uncontested leadership in Magical Britain. Oh, and the last of the Potter line was dead. And that meant that the magic obliging him to hand the Invisibility Cloak was over, and he could take it back. One step closer to becoming the Master of Death, and with it, Magical Britain. Now and forever.

Still, the Dark Mark hanging over Azkaban was also mixed news. It meant Fudge had less credibility in that smear campaign he was starting. At the very least, he would have to acknowledge the Death Eaters as a clear and present danger. Of course, what action he did take would be tricky. But Dumbledore was certain he could handle it. He could handle everything.

Of course, those with certainty had a form of tunnel vision, and that meant they didn't see the banana peel of inevitable chaos until it was too late…

 **CHAPTER 6 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **Sorry if you guys expected more action. I hope it still tickled your fancy. I know it was meant for children, for the most part, but I reckon Bella would have been better off as a foul-mouthed harridan somewhere between just about every one of Stephen King's more unhinged villains, and Revy 'Two-Hands' from** ** _Black Lagoon_** **.**

 **Incidentally, I forgot to mention, that whole idea of** ** _Twilight_** **fans trying to protect Stephanie Meyer in the past in Chapter 4 was inspired by sakurademonalchemist's** ** _Best Served Cold_** **. If you want a hilarious time-travel fic with elements of Clell65619's** ** _Inspected by No 13_** **(which is hilarious in its own right), give it a go.**

 **Finally, this'll be the last chapter for a while. Hope you enjoy it anyway. For another DZ2 challenge-inspired story, check out the first chapter of** ** _Just a Touch of Kleptomania_** **in** ** _The Cauldron_** **.**

 **Review-answering time!** **duskrider** **: I'd actually prefer to have Big Finish do an audio drama adaptation instead. They do quite a lot of book adaptations, and their** ** _Doctor Who_** **stories are brilliant.**

 **DZ2** **: Glad you enjoyed the shout-outs. Without you, this story wouldn't be here. :)**

 **Reishin Amara** **: Actually, Luna was thinking, one for Harry and one for Hermione.**

 **DragonTamer01** **: Yes. Yes I did.**

 **1.** ** _Dune_** **is easily one of my most favourite science fiction novels of all time, and Paul Atreides' descriptions of his own prescience, and his attempts to ensure the best possible futures take place, are interesting. I personally prefer the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries: though cheap-looking, it kept more of the themes of the story, and was closer to the book. David Lynch's film, while still good and with brilliant production design, nonetheless messed around too much with the story for my liking.**

 **2\. I vaguely remember this line being spoken by Abys Mal from** ** _Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar_** **.**

 **3\. I couldn't resist this reference to** ** _The Big Bang Theory_** **episode** ** _The Griffin Equivalency_** **, where Sheldon's attempt at faking a smile gets a similar reaction.**


	8. Chapter 7: On the Meeting of Vampires,

**CHAPTER 7:**

 **ON THE MEETING OF VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES, AND FUGITIVES**

Remus had to admit to being understandably skittish about this. But Sirius, via Tonks, had set up the Floo in 12 Grimmauld Place so he could Floo straight there. He needed to use a password: _Cthulhu fhtagn_. And with that, the two of them were off to the Pudding Club, later the morning the news broke about Azkaban.

They stepped out of the flames into a waiting room, clearly some basement room, but pretty well-furnished. But the eye-burning rainbow-coloured wall decorations he could do without. The door was locked, and Sirius told him to wait: a ward would alert them to their presence.

Soon, a rather ruffled and tired-looking Tonks entered. Remus could feel the werewolf within snarling in fear. "Wotcher," she said tiredly. "Sorry, we just had a busy night. You're lucky vampires don't need to sleep that often. So, you persuaded him?"

"I'm doing this for Harry's sake," Remus said. "I made a vow in front of Sirius."

"A very Sirius vow," Sirius smirked, leading to groans at the crime against the laws of good comedy. "Anyway, there's even more serious news. Azkaban…"

"…Has been broken into and the Death Eaters there have disappeared," Tonks said. "Yeah, we know."

"You read it in the _Prophet?_ " Remus asked.

Tonks shook her head, before she belched quietly. Patting her chest, she said, "Sorry 'bout that, Aunt Bella's repeating on me."

Understandably, Remus and Sirius stared at her. Also understandably, Sirius recovered first, got what she implied, and, surprisingly, smiled. "Well, let's face it, she'd repeat on anyone."

Remus blinked, before he said, in a small voice, "That was you? You…broke into Azkaban and _ate_ those Death Eaters?"

"Yep. You've got a problem?"

After a moment's careful consideration, knowing that the wrong answer may see him unable to ever see Harry again, Remus said, "Apart from vampiric cannibalism, I don't have much of a problem with trimming the Death Eater population down a bit. Dumbledore probably will, though."

"He likes to take the moral high ground, even when he has no right to it," Tonks snorted contemptuously. "Incidentally, Remus, you want any chocolate cake? We have a little left over from yesterday, and I heard from this mutt that you're a major chocoholic."

"Umm…does it have any blood or viscera in it?"

"No!"

"Well, I might give it a try…"

* * *

About twenty minutes later, Sirius poked at the catatonic form of Remus Lupin with a finger, the werewolf having a rather blissful look on his face, staring at some point in the infinite while drool grew a stalactite from his lips. He had entered this state with a few disturbingly orgasmic noises after eating a small slice of that cake. "Okay, I have two questions," Sirius asked. "One, is that a normal reaction to eating that cake? And two, is he insensate enough for me to doodle on his face?"

They were in the meeting room of the Pudding Club, and Luna said, with an unnerving grin, "One, the reaction is usually not quite that intense, but he's a chocoholic who has just found out what the Food of the Gods is really like(1), and two, yes, but I suggest hurrying." She handed Sirius a marker pen. "It's not permanent ink. I'd suggest playing 'Name that Moustache(2),' but we need to shave his own off first, and I don't think he would appreciate it...especially as it is a Symbiotic Hairy Nematode …"

* * *

A few scrawled doodles later, Remus had recovered enough (the solvent from the marker pen not helping his dazed state any) that they could hold a civil conversation. Not a particularly sane one, thanks mostly to the one convening it: Luna Lamia Lovegood, the Vampire Queen of the Pudding Club. And Runner Up in the Evil Laugh Competition (Harry won, but Luna and Hermione enjoyed the snogs that followed). But a civil conversation, especially considering four vampires and a werewolf were involved.

In her most queenly voice, Luna peered at Sirius and Remus while dressed in her robes of state (a bedsheet tie-dyed in colours that would have given a hippy a headache) and her crown of office (a cardboard and aluminium foil replica of the Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw she made when she was eight, and thus looked a little tattered to say the least). Her gaze was haughty. "So, these two are the survivors of the Marauders. We cannot say that we are impressed."

"Luna…" Harry groaned.

"Be silent, our consort," Luna said. "We are not amused, but we are remedying that. What makes you two believe you are of use to us?"

"Well, I can name many things, but causing chaos and discord in the name of sticking it to our enemies probably tops the list from your point of view, right?" Sirius asked.

Luna pouted. "Poo. I wanted to see you grovel a little while I talk with majestic plurals, but you had to go and take the fun out of it by answering correctly. Maybe I'll get more fun out of the Weasley Twins."

"You'd either get them to start worshipping you as a goddess, or else have them soil themselves in fear," Hermione said with fond exasperation.

"Maybe I can do both," Luna mused with a grin that could not be considered sane by any metric. Par for the course with her, really, even before she became a vampire. "I like the idea of being worshipped. WORSHIP LUNA LAMIA LOVEGOOD, VAMPIRE QUEEN AND GODDESS OF CHAOS AND KITTENS!"

"So, what's happening?" Harry asked, trying to get things back on track. "I mean, I know we set the cat amongst the pigeons…"

"To say the least, Pup. It's bedlam. Dumbledore kept Flooing me, still trying to pressure me to allow him to use 12 Grimmauld Place as his HQ. Told him to shove it," Sirius said. "I told him, until he agreed to train Harry, the Order would never be allowed at my home. Not that it's home to me, but it's a good hideout. That being said, I might need you to run interference at the DMLE, Tonks, because I think he may try to out my location."

"Not that simple, Sirius," Tonks said. "I was dumped from the DMLE, officially anyway. When Dumbledore tried holding my status over me, I went straight to Scrimgeour and Bones. They agreed to kick me out…officially, anyway. Unofficially, they want me to be their spy on the Order…and a liaison with Genevieve and the Pudding Club. I told them about your innocence, but their hands are tied, because we can't get Pettigrew as evidence."

"However, the DMLE only believe that Tonks is a low-ranking member in the Pudding Club," Luna said, "so she can get away with only feeding relatively unimportant information. They believe she is part of one of the sub-covens, rather than my right-hand woman. We are being illegal, and while we might have been able to get away with killing off Death Eaters, we might not be able to get away with the rest of our plan. So it's just as well that she can claim ignorance. And they can't use Legilimency to prove otherwise, because of the multiple souls within her. And vampires are allergic to Veritaserum."

Harry blinked. "They are? Like, we die?"

"No, we just go crazy, like if it's seer's blood. Luna spiked some blood I was drinking once for shits and giggles, and I ended up dancing on the ceiling quoting _Richard III(_ _3)_."

"Who incidentally wasn't a villain. He was just made out to be one by the Tudors," Luna said. "His nephew, well, one of them, became a vampire. I met him once. Looks nothing like Brian Blessed(4)."

"Anyway," Remus said, trying desperately to get the conversation back on track, "we thought we'd come and help you. Even if it's only by running interference with the Order. The weird thing is, the last time we spoke to Dumbledore…well, he didn't say it out loud, but I could have sworn he was talking about you in the past tense. As if he thinks you're dead."

"He had special charms on Harry linking him to instruments in his office," Luna said. "I saw them when I drank his blood: somehow, I was able to see through the link he had with them. But the link was severed when he turned into a vampire. He died for just long enough for the instruments to stop working, and the link was severed."

"So…does this mean we can't let Dumbledore see him alive?" Hermione asked.

Luna frowned. "On the one hand, that's not a problem. He'll assume it's a fault with his instruments. He might believe that Harry suffered from a fatal attack but was revived. He's not an idiot, he knows that Muggles have resuscitation equipment that makes our medicine look tame. But on the other hand, he might be suspicious as to how he survived, and the moment he passes the Hogwarts wards, Dumbledore will know, given the anti-vampire detection wards. So, heading back to Hogwarts is a no-no. Same for you, Hermione. Sorry."

After a moment, Hermione admitted, "I'd be more upset, but I got more of an education drinking those Death Eaters' blood than I ever did at Hogwarts. I should write a book: _Everything You Wanted to Know About the Dark Arts, But Were Too Afraid to Ask_. In fact, I want to eat more." She seemed to have an epiphany, her eyes glittering with unholy purpose. "Luna, Harry, I have dibs on Snape. I want his potions and Dark Arts knowledge." Her eyes widened in a strange lust. "I MUST HAVE THEM!"

Luna looked askance at Hermione. "Okay, but you know what they say about having too much greasy food."

"That's his hair, not his blood!"

"Which will be filled with bits from a lifetime of potions and their fumes."

"… _Ew_."

"And he had a thing for Lily," Remus pointed out. "Who knows what sort of masturbatory fantasies he has that you'll see when you drink his blood."

"…Double _ew_." By now, Hermione looked like she had sucked a lemon.

" _X, Y, and Z_ ," Luna sang cheerfully. " _Now I know my ABCs, won't you come drink blood with me?_ "

After a moment, Remus said, "The sad thing is, I've heard worse once from Lily when she joined us for a pub crawl. We always used to joke Lily was like a Lovegood when she was plastered."

"And there's nothing wrong with that, Professor Lupin, is there?" Luna asked in a sweet but dangerous tone of voice that made the werewolf sweat.

"No," he said in a quiet, ' _Please don't kill me_ ' voice.

"Good. I'm glad we're in concordance," Luna said, smiling sweetly, but showing her fangs off all the same. "Be nice, and I will give you more cake if you want. You seemed to reach chocolate nirvana there."

A strange, misty quality came over the werewolf's eyes. "Oh yes," he murmured. "Though I think a better term would be a Theobroma theophany."

"Oh, that's a good one," Luna said. "Theobroma theophany. Maybe I should rename my cake that. Genocide by Chocolate has bad connotations, even if it's a reference to Terry Pratchett. Yes, Theobroma Theophany…that has a nice ring to it. I might give you the recipe later…as well as the chance to shoot Fenrir Greyback with a silver bullet."

Remus blinked. "Well, when you put it like that…"

There was a knocking on the door. "My bloodthirsty little radish?" Xenophilus called out. "Stoker came and delivered a letter. It seems quite urgent."

"Coming, Daddy," Luna said, skipping over to the door, opening it, and taking the letter. She frowned as she read it, though that frown soon turned to a fang-filled grin. Faint giggles escaped her mouth, building into chuckles, and then gales of malevolent laughter. Then, after a moment, she stopped, pouting. "Oh, poo. Where was that evil laugh when we did the contest?"

"More to the point, who's the letter from? And what's it about?" Sirius asked.

"Ah, ah, ah! You don't poke your nose into other people's private correspondence," Luna said, waggling a chiding finger. "But as you are now officially accessories to…I mean, associates of the Pudding Club, I might as well deign to tell you."

"Wait, what do you mean, _accessories?_ " Remus asked with a bemused and mildly horrified look.

"Anyway," Luna said, ignoring Remus, "this missive is a rather pompous and bombastic demand for help from us. No prizes for guessing who."

Harry sighed. "Voldemort?"

"Yep. Got it in one! He basically wants our help in bolstering his forces, now that his Azkaban reserve are, unbeknownst to him, in our metaphysical tummies."

"Only you, Luna, could use the term 'metaphysical tummy' with any form of gravitas," Hermione sighed. "Are you going to say no?"

Luna pursed her lips. "That would be boring and staid. I don't do boring and staid. Neither would I say I would be joining him." Her eyes widened. "Ooh! Ooh! I've got a brilliant idea! I'm going to send him a slice of my cake!"

"He'll probably not eat it," Hermione pointed out.

"Not if I say that I may join him if he eats it," Luna said smugly. "He'll have to eat it then. Not before testing it for any poisons or potions."

"You're not going to put any in it?" Remus asked, confused.

"It ruins the flavour," Luna said. "Anyway, we want to mess with his head, lead him around a little. I'd say drive him insane, but that'd be a short trip."

"Like this place is the paragon of sanity," Tonks muttered mutinously.

"But you guys love me," Luna pouted. "Anyway, when we do send the cake, I will ask to have an emissary sent to us to negotiate. I will ask for a specific emissary, someone known to be a Death Eater, and alive. Sadly, that rules out Pettigrew, as they'd wonder how we know he's alive. But…well, Hermione, you know how you said you wanted to eat Snape?"

Hermione's eyes widened, and her own fang-filled smile appeared. "Ohhh…you mean eat him, turn him into a familiar, and have him as our spy in both the Death Eaters AND the Order?"

"Exactly!" Luna said, matching Hermione's grin with her own, Harry and the others joining in in a congress of smiles that didn't bode well for a certain Potions Master…

 **CHAPTER 7 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **Hoo boy, the plot's thickening now. Hope you enjoyed that little bit of insanity.**

 **Incidentally, by the time this chapter is published, I have also published** ** _Just a Touch of Kleptomania_** **as a full story. While less cracky than this story, it nonetheless features humorous Lunar Harmony goodness based on a DZ2 challenge, just like this story. Give it a go.**

 **The next chapter of this story will be posted with the next big update sometime in the middle of March. Keep an eye out, as you'll get to see Snape getting his…and Voldemort undergoing a spiritual experience. Though it won't change him…not for the better, anyway…**

 **Review-answering time!** **PersonaQeminod1** **: I'll consider it. The vampires in this story are only weakened by sunlight, not hurt by it, and running water does jack, so going down to the beach would be fine.**

 **duskrider** **: I know, right? Audio dramas are highly underrated as a medium. A lot of the stuff Big Finish did for** ** _Doctor Who_** **is miles above what has ever been done for TV. To put that into perspective, the new series episode** ** _Dalek_** **was based on** ** _Jubilee_** **, an audio drama Robert Shearman (who wrote** ** _Dalek_** **) had written for Big Finish. While** ** _Dalek_** **is a brilliant episode,** ** _Jubilee_** **is even more so, being darkly funny, as well as raising very pertinent issues about defanging our villains…as well as comparing humans to the Daleks…and finding us wanting.**

 **Detinc** **: I don't know of any other vampire Harry fics offhand. That being said, I have written a dhampir Harry story for** ** _Haemophilia_** **, a crossover with** ** _Hellsing_** **, which was based on an idea of sakurademonalchemist's, and it uses much of the same humour, though it is far more serious than this work. I can also recommend** ** _Harry Potter and the Endless Night_** **by The Sage of Toads which, while it doesn't have a vampire Harry, has Harry working for Hellsing…as Walter's protégé. It is cracky and hilarious, and I recommend it completely and utterly. After all, what other fic can have Harry owning Mad-Eye Moody after a prolonged duel, and then bodysurfing him out of St Mungo's? Or Alucard shoving Integra's uncle into a cow?**

 **DalkonCledwin** **: That is why I asked them before I did the challenge, so that I could use the general idea of the challenge with their permission. Tom the Bomb wasn't based on Issei: I thought of him as a failed glam rocker turned vampire. If I had to choose a fictional character that inspired me, albeit subconsciously, it'd be a more evil version of Mark Gatiss' character Les McQueen from the comedy series** ** _The League of Gentlemen_** **. I'm pretty sure I have seen Cthulhu plushies on sale online, and if there aren't, there needs to be. I mean, I have plushie** ** _microbes_** **, namely Salmonella, Malaria, and the Flu. And there needs to be a** ** _Haiyore! Nyarko-San!_** **crossover with Harry Potter. There used to be one, but I think it got taken down.**

 **DZ2** **: I have to confess, I was not that great a fan of Mark Hamill as the Joker, but that was because I was more familiar with the movies than the animated TV series. That being said, Hamill's performance in the Arkham games is brilliant, and you can't tell it's Luke Skywalker. A lot of the actors who play the Joker are brilliant. Aside from Hamill, I also love the voice Michael Emerson did for the adaptation of** ** _The Dark Knight Returns_** **, and Troy Baker did a good job for** ** _Batman: Arkham Origins_** **. And, of course, I can't forget either Jack Nicholson or Heath Ledger for their live-action versions, though I can't judge, for example, Cesar Romero, if only because I haven't really seen the old camp Batman TV live action series. Also, bugger is a perfectly good British expletive. I love using it.**

 **antishyguy weegee** **: Dammit, I should have used that joke, I completely forgot about it! :(**

 **Paladeus** **: Wow, it's pretty good to hear from you, considering that your Champions of Lilith challenge inspired a couple of my favourite stories. I have already answered Paladeus in correspondence, but Hermione is NOT a familiar. She was turned into a vampire. And the** ** _Doctor Who_** **reboot started with the Ninth Doctor (who is technically the Tenth if you count the War Doctor, but in terms of nomenclature, the War Doctor is an irrational number). I recommend you watch some of the classic series, and even track down the Big Finish audios too.**

 **The-Black-Baron-1943** **: Well, I've known the word for a while. Hell, it's even in a Monty Python sketch about elections. At one point, they mention a notorious moral guardian called Mary Whitehouse: "Mary Whitehouse has taken umbrage. Well, no surprises there…" Plus, Rowling obviously used the word umbrage as the basis of a certain toad's last name…**

 **deathgeonous** **: I chose Naruto's outfit because that's the opposite of what a shinobi should wear, and the beaglepuss/Groucho Marx glasses because I had been reading** ** _Homestuck_** **, and part of the first act involves John Egbert disguising himself with such a thing. I'd only known them as Groucho Marx glasses rather than beaglepusses, so I expanded my vocabulary there. And I also thought of one of the principles that Douglas Adams discussed when explaining the Somebody Else's Problem field in** ** _Life, the Universe, and Everything_** **: disbelief helps, so painting a mountain pink and using a SEP field would be a more effective way of rendering something invisible than anything else. Plus, Luna was being playful.**

 **SurealFoxtrot** **: If you haven't done so, watch** ** _Hellsing Ultimate Abridged_** **. That's a near-perfect combination of horror and comedy. Assuming you don't mind some off humour and know something about** ** _Hellsing_** **.**

 **1\. Chocolate is sometimes called the Food of the Gods, and the genus name of the cacao plant,** ** _Theobroma_** **, reflects this. Hence the later joke about Theobroma Theophany.**

 **2\. A joke used in the** ** _Red Dwarf_** **episode** ** _Trojan_** **. After Rimmer suffers from a hologrammatic computer crash due to built-up resentment and ends up in a catatonic state, Lister and the Cat play this game, with Cat, going first, drawing Salvador Dali's moustache on Rimmer's face.**

 **3\. The going crazy and quoting Shakespeare reaction to taking truth serum is my nod to Lois McMaster Bujold's very excellent science fiction novel series** ** _The Vorkosigan Saga_** **. There's a truth serum in that series, fastpenta, which important people have an engineered allergy to, so they will literally die if they are forced to give up secrets. The protagonist of most of the novels, Miles Vorkosigan (think a brittle-boned Tyrion Lannister in the future on a militaristic planet, and you have someone not unlike Miles), has a non-lethal allergy due to his physiology: he becomes hyperactive and quotes Shakespeare. I'm pretty sure this happens in both** ** _Brothers in Arms_** **and** ** _Cryoburn_** **. If you ever want a military science fiction series that is at turns serious and comedic, try** ** _The Vorkosigan Saga_** **.**

 **4\. Brian Blessed played Richard III's grown-up nephew in** ** _The Black Adder_** **, later becoming Richard IV after Bosworth Field. Don't ask how that's possible. It's just funny.**


	9. Chapter 8: On the Culinary Delights of

**CHAPTER 8:**

 **ON THE CULINARY DELIGHTS OF THE GREASY-HAIRED BAT**

Tom Marvolo Riddle was a man of no small ambition. This was an understatement on a par with saying that the ocean was wet. This was why he was Sorted into Slytherin. This was why he killed those people even as a lad. This was why he changed his name to Lord Voldemort based on an anagram and a vaguely French name. Who would follow a Dark Lord called Tom? Grindlewald got the right sort of name, sounding rather visceral and monolithic, but his near-Squib of a mother HAD to name him after that useless Muggle sugar daddy she had used Amortentia on.

His reasoning for his ambition was simple. At the tender age of seven, the young Tom Riddle decided that God didn't exist. For most, this would either provoke despair or relief. But sadly for the world, Tom belonged to a small subset of the remainder. He decided, as God didn't exist, that there was a vacancy to be filled(1). And so his quest for apotheosis began.

That being said, for all his exploration of means to achieve immortality at any cost (which, aside from the Horcruxes, also included rituals involving murder, rape, and, in one memorable ceremony, spanking Bellatrix Lestrange with a Mythril paddle before bedding her: insane though she was, and as incapable of love as he was, Voldemort was still capable of feeling lust, and Bellatrix was a VERY good lover), there had been nothing so transcendent as eating that slice of chocolate cake. Okay, he had checked it for every potion under the sun (and a few that weren't) with a paranoid precaution Mad-Eye Moody would have been proud of, but once he had declared it safe, and he gave but the slightest bit to Wormtail to taste-test (who, sadly, didn't perish, though he made a disturbingly orgasmic noise that reminded Voldemort that Peter Pettigrew should never breed), he tried it himself.

Voldemort was an intelligent man. Oh, he was a mercurial, impulsive, evil and wholly insane man, but he was an intelligent one. He knew what words like transcendent and theophany meant, but it wasn't until now that he truly experienced them.

Not that his minions could understand. All they saw was him staring into the distance, a single tear trickling from his red eyes. The fact that the Dark Lord was capable of weeping was surprising. How this happened after eating a non-potioned chocolate cake, they didn't know.

Voldemort had experienced something like theophany. In other words, he had thought he had met God. In reality, this was just his madness talking, triggered by the sheer delight of the chocolate cake. His deluded, Horcrux-addled mind had a hallucination of God as himself, albeit as a young man. Who, incidentally, told him to stop wasting time and murder more Muggles. He had a quota to meet, dammit!

Whether God exists or not is not a question that will be answered here. What is certain is that Voldemort was delusional, but his experience meeting his divine (well, diabolical by any normal metric) self had moved him in ways few things could. After all, it is one thing to believe one is God, but another thing entirely to have it confirmed.

When he came back to reality, he noticed a number of his followers looking at him in varying degrees of concern and confusion. Voldemort felt the tear on his ophidian face, and wiped it off, before glaring at them. "You saw… _nothing_ ," he hissed.

The gathered Death Eaters all nodded eagerly. About half a dozen of them promptly Obliviated themselves, though one of them got his wand movements wrong in his haste, and accidentally sent a _Reducto_ at his head, turning it into something like chunky salsa. As this was Goyle Senior, the only persons who missed him was Crabbe Senior, and Lucius Malfoy, as Crabbe and Goyle were his OWN personal minions, Merlin-dammit! The others were just unhappy that Goyle turned out to have enough brains in his skull (a surprising revelation in of itself) to stain their robes.

After a hasty clean-up, Voldemort, who had read the note, said, "Everyone save for Severus may go."

The Death Eaters left with, for the most part, an optimal combination of deference, respect and speed. They wanted to get the hell away from their master as quickly as possible, but they didn't want to show their fear…or at least enough for Voldemort to start handing out Cruciatus Curses like candy at Halloween.

Severus Snape, meanwhile, stood firm. "What would you have me do, My Lord?" he asked once the others had vacated.

"The Queen of Britain's Vampires has indicated that she may join me, on the condition that I ate that slice of cake. It was…a _beautiful_ cake, Severus. However, she wanted me to send an emissary, to negotiate her joining forces with us, and alone at that. She asked for you by name, and had her letter as a special Portkey. Normally, I would be hesitant to do so, but the truth is, with the raid on Azkaban, it would be prudent of me to acquire more forces before I can begin making my move." In other words, Voldemort was desperate, not that he would ever use such a word. A Dark Lord was never desperate. It would be unseemly to appear so.

"You are sending me out, My Lord?"

"Severus, my slippery friend, while keeping an eye on Dumbledore and his Order is a worthy task, I still am slightly uncertain of your true allegiance," Voldemort said silkily. "I trust that your knowledge of the Dark Arts would be up to the task of dealing with vampires if necessary. If she refuses to join us, then kill her, along with her associates, with Fiendfyre. It will leave the vampires leaderless, especially as the Dieudonne woman is currently on the Continent."

After a moment, Snape bowed. "I will go at once, My Lord."

"Excellent. Then go, Severus. Oh, and Severus?"

"Yes, My Lord?"

"Whatever happens…I MUST have that recipe for the cake! Do _not_ fail me!"

* * *

Snape took a brief detour, actually, rather than heading to his rendezvous with destiny. Severus Snape was a dour man with the personality of a toxic waste dump and an obsession with a dead woman that stopped only just short of the right side of necrophilia. He was also caught between two masters, one a Dark Lord who went into the accoutrements in a big way, the other a manipulative old fart who was a major control freak, hidden behind a kindly grandfather persona. And Snape hated that. He had since come to realise that he preferred to look out solely for himself, and wished he could be free of those masters so that he could fuck off and retire to some seaside town in Australia in absolute anonymity. He'd have to change his looks a little so he looked less like Alan Rickman, but he had potions for that. Sadly, one master branded him like cattle, and the other kept exploiting the fact that he kept him out of prison.

Still, Snape was glad about one thing. The old fart claimed that Harry Potter was dead, or at least had been through a traumatising experience that he had died temporarily. Snape hoped it was the former, or if it was the latter, that the little shit who had stolen Lily's eyes was in a VERY bad way. As in brain-damaged, eating, pissing, and shitting through tubes, and unlikely to ever come near Snape ever again. Or maybe he had a close encounter with a Dementor, which would end in a similar fashion.

Dumbledore had urged Snape to be cautious, and to try and persuade the vampires from joining with Voldemort…or else destroy them. They were Dark creatures, after all. And as Tonks had been uncooperative lately, Dumbledore said that, if she was present, well, they could cut their losses and deal with her. That certainly appealed to Snape: Tonks was a relative of Sirius Black, and while she was a closer relative to Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange, those two hated their niece. Tonks' death would hurt Black, and that made it perfectly acceptable in the petty and petulant mind of Severus Tobias Snape, Esquire.

Of course, Dumbledore, upon hearing about the cake, also wanted the recipe. He may prefer lemon sherbets and the like, true, but he wouldn't say no to any well-made confection. Especially as Voldemort had tried it, and had enjoyed it. Voldemort was too Dark to deserve a good chocolate cake. Only Dumbledore deserved it! Not that he said the last few things out loud, but Snape knew, even without Legilimency, that the old wether(2) was thinking it pretty damned loudly.

Snape, afterwards, activated the Portkey in the letter, albeit not before preparing himself to fight for his life, and taking an antidote to any potions he might be forced to inhale in aerosol form. He ended up stumbling into what had to be a waiting room of some kind, albeit decorated in clashing colours that looked like a rainbow shat itself all over them. So, Dumbledore would have loved them. That being said, Snape frowned. This didn't seem like the décor for a vampire queen's lair. In fact, it seemed vaguely familiar.

Snape raised his nose and sniffed. While mocked mercilessly for his big nose by the Marauders, it was a surprisingly sensitive one, a veritable boon for any Potions Master. Not as sensitive as a werewolf, say, but he could tell, for example, the distinctive smell of a dirigible plum. And while that in itself wasn't noteworthy, that, plus the décor, did tend to indicate a conclusion that he didn't like.

As he came to this realisation, his eyes picked out a series of runes that had started to glow on the wall. In the last few seconds before his consciousness left him, he realised that the runes created a ward that promoted sleep, and prevented Apparition.

His last conscious thought before everything went black was, simply, _Bugger_.

* * *

He didn't expect to wake up, and he certainly didn't expect to wake up with the face of that deranged little bitch Luna Lovegood gurning at him, a marker pen in her hand and the distinctive smell of marker pen ink in his nostrils. Though a substantial part of him was far from surprised to find that odious little shit Harry Potter (alive and well, it seemed), that Mudblood bucktoothed swot Hermione Granger, and the two surviving, non-traitorous Marauders present. The universe couldn't be kind enough to have them here as corpses, or else tied up for him to use the Cruciatus Curse until they filled the air with their screams and the smell of urine and faecal matter. Tonks was also looking on. He would enjoy torturing and killing her too.

"Salvador Dali!" Granger called out.

Lovegood pouted. "Oh, poo. How did you guess?"

"One, that moustache is pretty distinctive," Granger said. "Two, Dali's art would be right up your alley(3)."

"What in Merlin's name are you doing, you little shits?!" Snape snarled, his usual iron control lost in being in close proximity to those he hated most, as well as being helpless (he was bound tightly to his chair, and something was affecting his magic). The aftereffects of being knocked out didn't help either.

"Playing Name that Moustache," Potter said. "Sorry, Luna, but it's no fun when they're awake. You might want to get away, he might bite you. Bats are known to carry rabies."

"Along with Ebola, Lyssavirus, Hendra Virus(4), and Greasyhairitis," Lovegood said.

Snape glared at her, and tried to use Legilimency, only to be confronted with a kaleidoscope of memories, a blizzard of thought that he nearly got lost in, of the lives absorbed by a vampire, and only his quick thinking had him pulling out in time. And he realised he had made an even graver mistake than coming here when he saw Lovegood glaring at him. Especially when she bared her teeth in a snarl. The teeth, those teeth, _Oh Grandma, what HUGE teeth you have! I didn't know you had a shark in your immediate ancestry_.

"That wasn't very polite," Lovegood said with considerable understatement. "Especially as Voldemort sent you as an emissary to me."

What? She was the Queen of Vampires? Luna Lovegood? _Impossible!_ That's what Snape thought in his head. Out loud, he merely said, in a restrained tone that nonetheless betrayed Brobdingnagian depths of anger, hatred and contempt, "You're lying. I'd sooner believe Granger to be the Queen of Vampires."

"How flattering, Professor," Granger said with a smile that didn't bode well. "Then again, you ARE going to be my familiar after all, so it's just as well."

"You see, Snape," Lovegood said, "I know you're a spy for both sides, but really, you're only out for yourself. You're a self-centred greasy-haired bastard with a twisted obsession for Harry's mother that would ensure that you would screw her Inferius. Not only that, but you're so bad a teacher, you've effectively crippled a new generation of Healers and Aurors who need to know about Potions."

"It's not my fault that I have high standards," Snape sneered back.

"No. You just think anyone other than a Slytherin doesn't deserve to learn," Potter retorted. He suddenly lunged forward, and grabbed Snape's hand, squeezing it. "You always derided me as a celebrity, as someone coasting on their fame. You knew why I got it, because my mother saved me, but you couldn't see past the fact that I look like my father. Newsflash, _Snivellous_ , I am not my father. I am far worse than he is."

"Because you're a vampire? No, all you have done is painted a bigger target on your back! Dumbledore will be after you now when you kill me, and rightly so! He should have finished what Voldemort started!" Snape bit out, even as his bones began to break. He had suffered worse pain with the Cruciatus Curse. "And I should have strangled you in the crib, Potter! You should have died! YOU DID NOT DESERVE TO LIVE! ONLY LILY! SHE WAS MINE!" Suddenly, he screamed a wordless scream as his hand was turned into pulp. Then, with another scream, he felt his leg shattered, by Potter punching it. His other leg went the same way.

Potter then calmed himself with an effort, and then said, "You hurt me for no good reason, even though you owed my parents debts, especially my mother. I should kill you, make you die slowly and painfully…but Luna here has a better idea. Tell me, Snivellous…how much do you hate having to serve two masters?"

With perhaps the most honesty Snape had ever shown in his life, he said, biting the words out through the pain, "Almost as much as I hate you and your father."

"Good. Because you're going to be serving us now, while spying on both the Order, and the Death Eaters," Potter said. "All for the Queen of Vampires, and of the Pudding Club, Luna. And the thing is…I won't be the one controlling you as a familiar. That privilege goes to Hermione. She wants your knowledge of the Dark Arts. I mean, I've warned her about the dangers of greasy food, but…"

Granger stepped forward, and glared down at Snape. "I think it's fitting that someone you doubtless call a Mudblood in the privacy of your head is going to be pulling your strings. You will become my familiar, our puppet. Have you got any last words, _Professor?_ " The last word was dripping with sarcasm.

A strange calmness swept over Snape. A strange serenity. Oh, he was still angry, still filled with hate and contempt for those in front of him, and he was still in pain…but he knew now that he was about to die, or rather, become a familiar to Granger, and there was nothing he could do about it. So, he gathered himself, and said, in a low growl, "I hope you _**choke**_ on me _, you Mudblood slut._ " He then punctuated his last words by spitting on her face.

She wiped the spittle off her face too calmly. "I am going to enjoy this altogether too much," she remarked almost casually, as if discussing the weather, before she grabbed Snape's head, wrenching it back, and then biting down hard on his neck…

* * *

Afterwards, after they dumped Snape's body into the hatch to be fed upon by an eldritch horror, Hermione looked at the others, her features twisted in disgust. "He was the one who set Voldemort on your parents, Harry," Hermione said. "He overheard a prophecy, one that claimed someone was to be born soon with the power to stop Voldemort. He told Voldemort, hoping that Voldemort would only kill you and James Potter, and leave Lily to himself. But he was worried that Voldemort would kill Lily, so he approached Dumbledore."

"There was a prophecy around me?!" Harry demanded.

Sirius nodded. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything earlier, Harry, but I personally thought it was bollocks."

"As did I," Remus said. "It was apparently uttered by Trelawney. We don't know the full details, only that the children who fit the bill were you and Neville Longbottom. I don't think Dumbledore even told the whole thing to your parents. I only learned about the prophecy from Padfoot when we reunited after that whole mess after his escape. They didn't trust me at the time."

Sirius then added, "I only kept that from you because the prophecy is a load of shit, as far as I'm concerned, and I only knew a little about it anyway. Sorry."

Hermione grimaced. "And you were right about the masturbatory fantasies, Professor Lupin! _Ugh!_ I want to scrub out my head with bleach! It's almost not worth the encyclopaedic knowledge of the Dark Arts and potions!"

"Almost?" Harry asked.

"Let's just say that we need to track down one of his old textbooks that he annotated. You can learn a lot of what I've just done. It's in the Potions classroom at Hogwarts, last he knew. We'll have to find a way to get it." Hermione then grinned viciously, showing off her fangs, and a shadow extruded itself from her to reveal Snape, looking very angry. "At least we now have a not-so-willing accomplice to help us. Isn't that right, Snivellous?"

"Fuck off, Mudblood!"

"That's _Mistress_ Mudblood to you, Snivellous…"

 **CHAPTER 8 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **So, there you have it. Snape's been captured and eaten. Okay, a little too easily, but Snape was prepared for anything but Runes. Plus, this story is meant to be about Lunar Harmony kicking the arses of those who deserve it.**

 **Incidentally, Voldemort believing God to be himself while under the influence of the Theobroma Theophany was partly inspired by William Gull's dying hallucination/mystic journey in** ** _From Hell_** **.**

 **Anyway, sorry if the latter part of the chapter seemed rather darker and more serious than before. It happens. Even in crack, you have to have some serious bits. And frankly, I wanted to give Snape a painful death. That being said, I didn't want him to go out in a cowardly fashion. Snape is such a vicious bastard that he would go down cursing defiantly.**

 **The next chapter may not be for a while. But Umbridge will get hers.**

 **Review-answering time!** **mordreek** **: Well,** ** _Blackadder_** **is brilliant, and the Vorkosigan Saga needs more fans. I'm glad you liked those references.**

 **SurealFoxtrot** **: Wholly unintentional, but I'm glad you thought of it that way. Serendipitous, that.**

 **duskrider** **: He tried to apologise to Lily, but by that point, he had joined the Death Eaters, so she refused.**

 **DZ2** **: Not quite that bad. It'd repeat on her rather than make her high.**

 **PikaMew1288** **: Well, in most of my Nasuverse crossovers, Luna is said to have Zelretch as an honorary grandfather, and the Brunested sisters as her honorary sisters. She's never a vampire in those, though in one, she IS half-Homunculus, namely in** ** _Perils of Magical Investigative Journalism_** **.**

 **WhiteElfElder** **: Harry was only dead temporarily: the Goblin instruments are made of sterner stuff, so he can still access them if needed.**

 **DalkonCledwin** **: Oh, so that's where it went! I didn't realise you had written it!**

 **1\. This is based on the initial paragraph of Gareth Roberts' novelisation of the** ** _Doctor Who_** **story** ** _Shada_** **, which was originally written by Douglas Adams. It's about Skagra deciding he wanted to become God. Incidentally, I wholeheartedly recommend that book for any Whovians.**

 **2\. In some of my previous fanfics, Dumbledore has been called a wether (even in a couple of the fics where I don't actually bash him). A wether is a castrated goat.**

 **3\. This is a continuation of the** ** _Red Dwarf: Trojan_** **joke from the previous chapter, where Dali's famous moustache was the first to be drawn on a catatonic Rimmer's face by the Cat. Dali's famously surreal images would probably suit Luna's own surreal nature.**

 **4\. Save for Ebola, all of the previous diseases are known to be carried by bats. Ebola, however, is suspected to be a bat-borne disease. Greasyhairitis, obviously, is a made-up name, and is not transmitted by bats, but I am sure somewhere, there is a medical term for greasy hair.**


	10. Chapter 9: On the Inadvisedness of

**CHAPTER 9:**

 **ON THE INADVISEDNESS OF EATING BATRACHIAN HYBRIDS**

Now, the thing about vampire-detection wards is that they don't detect familiars. The reason for this is that, while familiars are magical constructs based around the absorbed soul of the familiar, they are also meant to resemble the original in every way, and they were impossible to detect, save via Legilimency. Very few vampires, sadly, took advantage of this little loophole because, like wizards, witches, and indeed humans in general, they tended to be stupid, or at least blinkered to thinking outside the square. Oh, they used familiars to infiltrate target households and disable defences, but this was in mundane households as well as those magical ones that didn't have vampire-detection wards.

However, Hermione came up with a plan that had Luna sulking because she hadn't thought about it first. Luna, the best lateral thinker in Hogwarts, hadn't even considered using a familiar to try and disable the anti-vampire wards at Hogwarts. That also meant they could go back to Hogwarts without triggering the wards. And while the three of them had learned more about magic through consuming the Death Eaters than they ever would through Hogwarts, they also knew that sticking it sideways to Dumbledore would be a lot easier if they removed the anti-vampire wards, and thus obtained access to Hogwarts. And thankfully, Luna knew where the wardstones were. In fact, she knew how to modify them so that the anti-vampire wards would only detect vampires who weren't part of the Pudding Club.

So they sent Snape off on his not-so-merry way to report back to his former masters. To both, he would say that the offer was refused, and he barely escaped with his life. Oh, and the recipe for Theobroma Theophany. Two copies, one for Voldemort, and the other for Dumbledore. He did use Fiendfyre, but he couldn't be sure whether the Vampire Queen was caught up in it. He also would say the Vampire Queen concealed her identity.

At least, that was the cover story.

Luna was happy to give Voldemort and Dumbledore the recipe to her cake: she wanted them to feel a zenith of the sweetest joy before she brought them low to their utmost nadir. Plus, if she was lucky, the sugar overdose might kill one or both of them. The fact that she changed the ingredients so that the consumers would hallucinate was just icing on the cake.

"Anyway," Luna said shortly after sending Snape out, "our next order of business: the Umbitch!"

Tonks sighed. "Oh, thank Merlin and whatever deities are listening. Actually, listen, I know you said Hermione could eat her, but trust me, she wouldn't want to. Can I do that?"

"As your once and future queen, I will deign to grant my subject's request, Nymphadora," Luna said with a smirk, which widened at Tonks' scowl. "But why?"

"Payback," Tonks said simply. "Bitch made snide remarks about me and my family, about my father being a Mudblood and my mother being a Blood Traitor. And while I'm not really going to enjoy having her memories inside me, I at least know what I'm in for." Tonks then showed off her fangs in a vicious grin. "Plus, I want to have her as my little puppet."

"…Can I watch?" Remus asked. "I mean, she passed all those anti-werewolf laws."

After a moment, Luna shrugged. "I will allow this."

Remus fished around in his pocket, and handed them a mirror. "It's enchanted, it allows communication with someone holding the other one. Sirius has one, and I had one. We were going to give Harry one later. I mean, I shouldn't really say I would enjoy watching Umbridge get eaten, but…I can't help but see the appeal of her being eaten."

"I'll make popcorn," Sirius said. "And can we have more of the cake? You know, to congratulate Moony on the passing of his worst foe?"

Luna pursed her lips in thought, before shaking her head. "Not a good idea. It's rather addicting. You don't want to turn him into a Theobroma Theophany junkie, do you?"

"Too late," Remus said with a wistful look on his face.

Tonks looked at them. "So, how exactly are we going to get away with eating a governmental official? I mean, don't get me wrong, I want her dead, or turned into a familiar, but she's also Senior Undersecretary to Fudge, as she delights in reminding us lowly peons. She'll be noticed going missing."

"She has a point," Hermione said.

Luna waved her hand. "Details, details. We can just have her in place as our familiar, like with Snape. Then, she can die of an accident. Somewhere in Australia. I hear they kill and stuff toads down there."

After a moment, Hermione said, "Those are cane toads. Ugly looking things. Does she look uglier than a cane toad?"

"No, though not for want of trying," Remus said. "I wouldn't be surprised if she had one in her ancestry."

"You know, it seems like we're sitting around doing a lot of talking," Harry said, speaking up for the first time in a while. "Why is that?"

"Oh, that's just the writer. He loves doing dialogue rather than action," Luna said offhandedly.

The others gathered looked askance at her, before they decided to just roll with it. Sadly, that was far from the weirdest thing to have ever come out of her mouth.

"Of course it isn't!" Luna said. "I have Fourth-Wall Breaking and Surreal Dialogue as standard skills, and my character class is Cloud Cuckoolander! Incidentally, get to the good part, dammit!"

* * *

Moving right along…

" _I HEARD THAT!_ "

 _Ahem_. Moving right along, skipping forward to that evening, we have Dolores Umbridge settling down to a nice cup of tea after a day spent kicking puppies. Metaphorically rather than really, but Dolores Umbridge would kick actual puppies if she thought she could get away with it. Not kittens, though. She loved kittens.

Sadly, that is her only redeeming feature. Her uncanny ability to navigate the shark-infested waters of Magical Britain's political system could be considered a skill of sort to be admired, but as she used it for the aforementioned metaphorical puppy-kicking, well…

Anyway, that's when the beautiful Queen Luna and her minions in the Pudding Club made their heroic entrance and ganked the evil Queen Bitch of Toads and…

Luna, get your hands off the bloody keyboard. No! Bad girl! I never metafiction I liked, so stop that! I write at my own pace, goddammit! Do that again, and I won't write any more Lunar Harmony fics, you got it?! Or _any_ Harry/Luna fics, for that matter. Anyway, what more do you want? You're a vampire queen in this story, and in _Quoth the Raven_ …, you're the adopted mother of Hansel and Gretel from _Black Lagoon_! How much more crazy shit do you want in your holistic quantum existence?

…All right, but you'll have to wait until I get the manga before I set you up as Homura's Ashikabi from _Sekirei_.

What, you want Karasuba too? I'd ask if you're crazy, but that seems rather redundant given who I'm speaking to.

Sorry about that. _Someone_ has a bad habit of breaking the fourth wall and leaving me to foot the repair bill. She's been taking too many lessons from a certain Mr Wilson.

Anyway, Dolores Umbridge was sitting at home, having a nice, relaxing cup of tea, and reminiscing about the various horrible things she did today, and the horrible things she had planned for the future. She intended to do to Harry Potter's reputation what 4Kids did to _One Piece_ : slash it to bits, sodomise it, and make it a mangled ruined mess that people would view with disgust and contempt. She was already laying down the groundwork. Harry Potter was someone who rocked the boat, and Dolores Umbridge did not like having her boat rocked. Dealing with that fiasco at the Quidditch World Cup and the mess Bagman and Crouch made of the Tri-Wizard Tournament was bad enough.

Of course, dealing with Harry Potter was a secondary objective. She actually wanted to topple Dumbledore from his lofty perch. Oh, how she despised his self-righteousness and his fame and that appalling taste in clothes. Which, incidentally, was the pot calling the kettle black, considering Umbridge's preference for eye-searing fuchsia cardigans that were less _haute couture_ and more like eldritch abominations in woven cloth.

In some universes, Umbridge's crusade was merely a means to gain personal power by toppling Dumbledore. In others, she was a wannabe Death Eater looking to curry favour with Voldemort. In some universes, like this one, her crusade against Dumbledore was justified, if for selfish reasons, while in some, it was just the self-aggrandizement of a Batrachian Bitch.

And while karma's existence, even as an impersonal force, is yet to be proven, the truth is, it was somewhat karmic that the Pudding Club came a-calling. Umbridge's first notion to it was when the doorbell rang. She blinked, before she headed to the front door, and opened it, finding a young woman with blonde hair smiling, holding a box. She was about to tell this young woman that whatever she was selling, Umbridge wasn't buying any, until the woman said the magic words. "Umm, we have a sale on kitten plates? Collector's edition, super-rare."

Umbridge blinked, before she put on her best, simpering, unctuous smile. The sort that made milk curdle, flowers wither, and, on at least one memorable occasion involving a faulty potion, a man's face melt off. "Why, come in," she said, in a sickeningly sweet tone of voice that could have been marketed as a powerful emetic. Seriously, there were times when her saccharine tones had caused people to vomit copiously.

Umbridge thought she heard what sounded like someone stumbling, a muffled 'Ow!', and another muffled, 'Watch it!' behind the saleswoman. Turning back to her, the saleswoman said, "I have a few other plates. They have enchanted portraits that complain if they're handled too roughly. I can't get them off my hands quick enough."

"I wonder why," Umbridge remarked acidly.

They went into the living room, and the blonde-haired woman placed the box down on the table, opening it for Umbridge to peruse the contents. Umbridge frowned when she didn't see the expected kitten plates. Instead, there was a strange yellow rat or rabbit like thing with red cheeks. "Pika?" it asked, before its eyes widened in horror. "Chu?! Pika-pikachu?!" Which, in Pokémon speak, translated to, " _What the fuck is that?! Please tell me that's not a new Pokémon!_ "

"What is this little monstrosity?!" Umbridge demanded. "This little rat should be poisoned!"

"Pika-pika, Pikachu! PIIIKAAAACHUUUUU!" Which translates to, " _Fuck you, bitch! THUNDERBOLT!_ "

A blast of electricity from Pikachu caused Umbridge to convulse, strobing from positive to negative. She collapsed, shuddering and juddering, into her favourite armchair, which she promptly soiled as she lost control of her bowels. Umbridge fell into merciful unconsciousness.

Pikachu twitched its nose, before remarking in disgust, "Pika."

"Yeah, I know, we can smell it from here," Harry said as he shucked off the Invisibility Cloak concealing him, Hermione, and Luna. Tonks changed her appearance back to her preferred state.

Hermione, meanwhile, said to Luna, "How the hell did you get a Pokémon?"

"My father's a magical cryptozoologist. A Pikachu's easy. It's the Shiny ones that are hard," Luna said offhandedly.

"That explains so much, and yet so little," Harry muttered, bringing out the mirror to let Remus watch.

"And now, I'm not sure I want to eat her," Tonks said, looking a bit green around the gills. "She shat herself. I don't want to eat shit. I have enough of that at work."

"C'mon, Tonks! Just use an _Aguamenti_ , then a _Scourgify_ on her first," Luna said. "That way, all you'll taste is magical suds and not excrement."

Tonks shrugged, and did as she was asked, though she deliberately overpowered both spells, with the net result that Umbridge woke up looking like the proverbial drowned rat. She spluttered, and then glared up at Tonks. "Auror Tonks…I'll see you put into Azkaban for this outrage," she hissed.

"Yeah, no," Tonks said. "You've pissed off the wrong people, Umbitch. Your worst nightmare has come."

"What? The ones with the kittens being eaten by the mutant Bundimun?" Umbridge asked.

"Umm, no."

"The one with the centaurs chasing me down to gang-rape me?"

* * *

In the canon Potterverse, the Dolores Umbridge of that timeline sneezed as she fled through the Forbidden Forest, centaurs pursuing her…

* * *

"Okay, no. And damn you for putting that mental image into my head. I mean, not that I'd mind YOU getting gang-raped by a herd of centaurs. But I don't want the mental imagery," Tonks said.

"Tonks, focus," Hermione hissed.

"Oh, right," Tonks said. "I'm your worst nightmare in that I'm a disgruntled Ministry employee who is also a vampire who is about to eat your sorry toad-like arse and turn you into a familiar."

Umbridge blinked up at her incomprehensibly. "But…I've only had nightmares about that once! And it was Weatherby doing that! And, ummm…" She blushed slightly. "It wasn't a nightmare."

Tonks, Harry, Hermione and Luna blinked at the thought of Umbridge having a wet dream about sex with a vampire Percy Weasley, and thought, in unison, _Oh, HELL no!_ Tonks, out loud, said, "Screw it, I'm eating you!"

* * *

A few minutes later, Tonks was retching. "Oh, and the aftertaste!" she howled. "I need some Listerine! And is there any Listerine for memories? I mean, other than a Memory Charm? I'd rather eat my crazy aunt again than eat that toad bitch! Hell, I'd rather have eaten _Snape!_ I need a Time Turner to prevent me from eating Umbridge!"

Harry and Hermione looked at Luna, who shrugged, and said, "She'll get over it. Give it time. Vampires live for centuries, she's got enough time to get over it…"

 **CHAPTER 9 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **Okay, so, that was easily one of my crackier chapters, what with the fourth wall-breaking and the cameo of Pikachu. Hell, that's at least as crackier, if not more so, than** ** _Final Fantasy VI Abridged_** **, or** ** _Nitimur in Vetitum_** **, my crackier fics. Let's face it, having Luna break the fourth wall down is a matter of when rather than if in more humorous fics.**

 **Incidentally, in case you're wondering if I have gone absolutely insane when I did that rant against Luna, well, the jury's still out, but yes, I did make her the guardian of Hansel and Gretel in my** ** _Black Lagoon_** **crossover** ** _Quoth the Raven_** **… (which, along with another Potterverse/** ** _Black Lagoon_** **crossover** ** _Disquiet_** **, I recommend, especially if you like to see Harry paired up with Sawyer the Cleaner). And while I may not include Luna in it, I am strongly considering doing a** ** _Sekirei_** **crossover in the future, once the manga is republished later this year and I can get an idea of the story a bit better, beyond fanfic, anyway.**

 **Review-answering time!** **DZ2** **: I'm glad you enjoyed it. I like a well-done Severitus fic (** ** _The Best Revenge_** **and its sequel being my particular favourites of the genre), but canon Severus was a self-centred bastard. But he's not actually that cowardly. If he knew he was going to die, he would go out screaming in defiance and fury rather than fear.**

 **raw666** **: Alucard MAY make a cameo appearance, but that's up in the air.**

 **No numbered annotations this time.**


	11. Chapter 10: On the Strangeness of Two

**CHAPTER 10:**

 **ON THE STRANGENESS OF TWO OLD WIZARDS**

Dumbledore scowled impatiently. He had given the recipe for the chocolate cake to the House Elves, and he wanted that chocolate cake now, Merlin-dammit! He needed that Theobroma transcendence! As in, medically needed it! Well, not really, but hey, this Dumbledore lived in a world of his own, where other people's opinions, along with the laws of morality, society, and fashion, had absolutely no truck whatsoever. And he liked it like that.

He also liked confectionary.

The rationalisation he had made for it in his mind was that, being the Most Powerful Wizard Since Merlin™, he needed a lot of sugar to fuel his magical reserves. This actually isn't that much of a delusion: magic did tend to eat through calories quite strongly.

However, a more fundamental, Freudian reason was that his brother and sister had a bad habit of hogging the sweets and stealing them from him whenever they had the chance. Well, look who was laughing now? His sister was…well, actually, even Dumbledore didn't think she deserved death for stealing his sweets. Not at the time, anyway. But his brother deserved to be nothing more than a dubious publican with a thing for goat-specific zooerastia. That was more than he deserved for the heinous crime of stealing Albus' sweeties, being known as Aberforth, the Goat-Buggerer.

It was partly the loss of control over his sweets that also led to him being a massive control freak. He didn't view his puppets as pieces on a chess board, but rather, more like a checker board made out of Smarties. Much more colourful.

Speaking of game pieces, Dumbledore was a little annoyed. Harry Potter hadn't turned up at the Dursleys. The Dursleys themselves had disappeared. And, recently, both Sirius Black and Remus Lupin had gone incommunicado, along with the newly-vampirised Tonks. All of which was more than a little concerning. That, plus the rumbles he heard from within the bowels of the Ministry which portended what was known in technical and polite terms as a shitstorm. He knew Fudge wouldn't have taken the warning about Voldemort's return very well, the cowardly, inept, bribe-taking piece of shit, but the smear campaign would be irritating to weather.

The truth was, Dumbledore never started evil. Nobody really is born evil. And like too many who turned to evil, he was the epitome of someone who walked a road to hell, paved with good intentions. As Luna noted before, it was the accolades he was showered with after defeating his ex that had Dumbledore begin to head down a path Grindlewald had nearly brought him down. But in a different way. Grindlewald wanted to rule overtly, wielding power like a whip or a hammer. But Dumbledore understood subtlety. He understood it better than most Slytherins, and he had been a Gryffindor!

Sadly, things had, by now, degenerated to the point where he believed himself, in his lemon drop-addled mind, to be sole arbiter of virtue in Magical Britain, and any dissent was to be dealt with. His controlling tendencies had grown to Brobdingnagian proportions (try saying that adjective quickly three times!), as had his ego. Oh, he would act humble and eccentric, like the grandfather you always wanted secretly, but in truth, he was nowhere near as benign as he acted. People thought he was past his prime, and while that was certainly the case, that certainly didn't mean he was weak. In fact, he was probably still in the Top 5 most powerful wizards alive in Magical Britain, and the Top 10 in the world. He was still smart and cunning, age doing surprisingly little to dull his faculties. Oh, his faculties were being dulled, but it wasn't age that was doing it.

It was hubris.

The sad thing was, Dumbledore could have been a force for good. In other times and realities, he was. But sadly, he wasn't. Which was why the Pudding Club had no compunction about feeding him a cake that would cause him to act crazier.

With a pop, a rather generous slice of chocolate cake appeared in front of Dumbledore in his office. "Thank you," he said, absently, to the House Elf that had delivered it. If there was one undeniably decent thing about this Dumbledore, it was that he was genuinely, if a little condescendingly, nice to the House Elves under him. Then again, they did as they were told, and brought him what he wanted with no complaint, so it was nothing to be nice to them.

What he didn't know was, through orders relayed through Snape, Dobby was currently watching Dumbledore from a corner of the office. He had set up cameras around the room, video cameras enchanted to be able to record things. Fawkes could have warned Dumbledore, but Fawkes didn't like the old wether he was forcibly bound to, and was going to sit back and enjoy the show. The bribe of a few matchboxes' worth of matches and a small bottle of petrol was a welcome bonus(1).

* * *

Half an hour after eating the Theobroma Theophany, Dumbledore was swatting at little motes of light, giggling. "I see them now! Wrackspurts! Xenophilus was right! Oh dearie me, I must clear the air of them!"

* * *

An hour after his cake, Dumbledore was naked. This wasn't an unusual state of affairs while he was alone in his office, and the door was locked. However, this time, the door was unlocked, the gargoyle not blocking the way, and Minerva McGonagall, coming in to deliver some paperwork that needed to be signed, got to see Dumbledore, in his naked glory, singing about being part of the Midnight Crew(2) to Fawkes.

He didn't notice McGonagall enter, stop, stare in appalled silence, and then finally turn on her heel and leave, the Deputy Headmistress resolving to try and forget the incident either through copious amounts of scotch, or a decent Memory Charm. She was going to try the former first. Dumbledore's beard may have been long enough to tuck into his belt when he was wearing one, and it was certainly long enough to cover his genitals, but it was still a traumatising experience…

* * *

"…And that is why I think insufflating lemon sherbets is most salutary for nasopharyngeal health," Dumbledore concluded his lecture, wondering why his audience wasn't applauding his genius. "Incidentally, Gellert, Ariana wants to have your lovechild, but I told her you had a vasectomy charm on your testicles thanks to Aberforth. That being said, I am willing to share our bed. What do you say? Two Dumbledore siblings for the price of one…"

* * *

"Why, no, Mr Eric Blair, I don't think the surveillance on Harry Potter was intrusive at all, so it's nothing like that book of yours(3). You disagree? Well, fie upon thee! And fire upon thee! _Incendio!_ "

A portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black shrieked rather girlishly, and rushed for another portrait frame as the unhinged Dumbledore set the painting aflame.

* * *

" _Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc_ ," Dumbledore murmured(4). Then, he fell asleep, lying on the floor in front of his desk. Loud snores came from the naked old man with the abnormally long beard (which Luna strongly suspected to be a parasitic moss that fed on lemon sherbet, and was a theory that Harry and Hermione didn't wholly dismiss out of hand). Dobby smiled, glad it was over. He looked over at Fawkes, who gave a grin of his own, insomuch as a bird could grin. The pair of them made their way out of the Headmaster's Office by their own means. Fawkes was going to gorge on the matchsticks and petrol, while Dobby had a video to deliver…

* * *

And what of Voldemort?

"…And when he ate what I fed to him, it turned him into something out of a goddamned healer's encyclopaedia!" Voldemort said to his spellbound audience. Literally, spellbound. He had to use Body-Binds to keep them (well, save for a few of the more morbidly-interested ones) in place while he regaled them with a tale from his misspent youth, learning the Dark Arts.

"His head swelled up like a watermelon, he gained over a hundred pounds in a little over two hours, he got claws, bleeding warts, and then THAT'S when I noticed the sextet of huge, hairy breasts growing out of his back(5)!" Voldemort then shrugged. "That was the last time I let Rookwood make potions for me. I wanted superwizards! Wizards capable of setting the sky afire and turning the seas into excrement and blood! But…I am, as always, surrounded by incompetents or madmen. I wonder why that is? Is it my charisma? My machismo? I mean, LOOK AT MY BODY!"

He tore open his robes to reveal his skeletal form. And he pointed to it. Or rather, a specific part of him. "SEE THIS? THIS MAKES _NAGINI_ ENVIOUS! SHE WANTS TO BE THAT LONG! AND I'VE TRIED, AND TRIED, AND TRIED, BUT I CAN'T GET IT UP!" After a moment's uncomfortable silence, he added, "I mean, her body length. I can't get that up." He then got back onto his theme. "BUT THIS! THIS THING…OH, BACK IN THE SEVENTIES, BELLA LOVED THIS! SHE CALLED IT THE MONSTER FROM THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS! AND I DID NOT ENHANCE ITS LENGTH WITH DUBIOUS RITUALS!"

Actually, he did. But that's a story for another time…

* * *

"I just want to be loved," Voldemort wept as he hugged Nagini. "Is it too much to ask? You love me, don't you, Nagini?"

" _Yes, Master_ ," she hissed in Parseltongue.

"I love you too, Nagini. And with Bella missing, I need someone else. I could go and bang Malfoy's wife, but she doesn't have that edge of cruelty and sadism and serpent-tongued thingy that you have. Why oh why can't you be more human-like?! I'd be on you like…some metaphor I can't think of yet."

Now, Voldemort's magic, reacting wildly to his intoxicated state, decided to grant him his wish. There was a flare of magic that blinded and dazzled those present, and when they blinked the afterimages from their eyes, they saw that Nagini had changed significantly.

For one thing, she had limbs now. Long slender limbs. Covered in scales, of course. Oh, and she had breasts. Her face was beautiful, albeit in a somewhat cruel way, long and elegant. Her eyes were golden with slitted pupils. Her hair was green. If you could ignore the scales, and let's face it, a lot of people would, she was instantly desirable. Oh, and she was naked. Gloriously so.

Then again, so was Voldemort. Somewhat less gloriously so. Well, his robes were in tatters, enough to show his endowment. Which had gone from flaccid to priapic in two seconds flat.

It was, oddly enough, Nagini who took the initiative, lunging forward and snogging her master hard. And, well, it all went downhill from there. For those watching, anyway, including a certain House Elf…

* * *

As the video of what they had captured in both Hogwarts and Voldemort's lair came to an end, well, reactions were understandably mixed. Remus and Tonks were fighting each other to get to the nearest sink or toilet to indulge in a technicolour yawn, Harry and Hermione looked mortified, Luna was laughing, and Sirius was tilting his head. "Huh. I guess you _can_ do it like that. Must be because she was once a snake. More flexible than a human."

"Damn you, Luna," Hermione muttered in a lost voice. "No, seriously. After you had Harry turn me into a vampire, I've gotten more nightmare fuel than I had when mortal. I did not need to see Dumbledore naked, I did not need to see Voldemort naked, and I certainly didn't need to see _Voldemort having sex with Nagini!_ "

"Where's your sense of adventure?" Luna pouted.

"Died a slow painful death when I ate Snape," Hermione said utterly deadpan.

"Well, when we're older, we can try a few of those things we saw," Luna said. "We can even have Nymphadora join in. Metamorphs are great for sexual experimentation, aren't they Nymphadora?"

What Tonks tried to exclaim was something along the lines of _Fuck off_ , but as she had to open her mouth to do so, it became, thanks to the torrent of vomit that splashed all over Remus' robes and shoes, " _Fugorrrrrfffffffhhhhk!_ "

Harry, after a moment, said to Hermione, "Please tell me you know how to either distil a Brain Bleach potion, or a VERY precise Memory Charm."

"Working on it," Hermione said. Then, rather too casually, she asked, "Luna, are vampires vulnerable to strangulation?"

"Nope. Decapitation, yes, strangulation, no. And no, I'm not into that sort of kink."

"I wasn't asking about any kink," Hermione growled.

"I know."

 **CHAPTER 10 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **So, there you have it. More crack. I wanted to put in Luna channelling Dio Brando because I can, but couldn't figure out the right place to put it. So, maybe next chapter, we can have Luna screaming "ZA WARUDO!" and using steamrollers as weapons. Oh, and the current title is** ** _On the Nuances of Vampire Puberty_** **. No, really.**

 **The concept of a human Nagini is one I used before. In** ** _Tales of the Fall_** **, my omakes compilation for my** ** _Highschool DxD_** **crossover** ** _Fall to Zenith_** **, I did an omake where a transformed Nagini and Serafall Leviathan play beach volleyball with Voldemort…who has been turned into a Prinny. No, really. And quite frankly, if Voldemort could turn Nagini into a human, he'd be banging her before you can say** ** _Avada Kedavra_** **. Hell, I'm sure he could have persuaded Bellatrix to have a threesome with a transformed Nagini. Have fun with that mental image, by the way.**

 **Review-answering time! I've had more than a few complaints about the fourth wall being broken in the last chapter. To which I say, tough shit. This is MY story, and it is a crackfic. If you don't like it, the door is there. Don't let it hit you on the arse on the way out. This is easily one of my most popular fics (it'll reach my top ten in terms of favourites and alerts with this chapter, I reckon), and so I must be doing SOMETHING right. Some fanfics are works of high literature. Others are trash. And yet others are basically meant to be fun. You know, FUN? So just sit back, disengage your brain a little, and have fun. Otherwise, go away. Or else read some of my more serious fics if you want. It's your choice.**

 **Okay, now that that's over, time for the actual reviews. A few mentioned a** ** _Sekirei_** **fic. I've already started a Potterverse crossover with** ** _Sekirei_** **, a WBWL story called** ** _Wings of the Forsaken_** **. I've also done a crossover with** ** _Pirates of the Caribbean_** **, called** ** _Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho, An Ashikabi's Life for Me_** **.**

 **Dis Lexic** **: It's not the first time I've had Luna shatter the fourth wall. I did this in one of my earlier fanfics,** ** _Harry Gainsborough and the Philosopher's Stone_** **, the sequel to** ** _Harry Potter and the Cetra Heritage_** **. Then again, Gilgamesh in the former acted like Deadpool. I don't know why some people get sick of a wacky Luna. She's fun to write and fun to read.**

 **PikaMew1288** **: Pikachu will be less of a sidekick and more of a recurring accomplice. If I can be arsed remembering him.**

 **imortal333** **: Sadly, Alucard won't be making an appearance any time soon. That being said, if you want some semi-Abridged Alucard action, why not try my** ** _Hellsing_** **crossovers** ** _Haemophilia_** **and** ** _The Uncertainty Principle_** **?**

 **1\. In** ** _Tempest of the Fae_** **by DMentor (put a dot between the D and Mentor), Fawkes enjoys eating matches (presumably they're junk food for a Phoenix) and petrol (which is like alcohol), so Harry, Luna and Hermione, through the Sorting Hat's guidance, actually helps Fawkes obtain these things. Unfortunately, Fawkes has been known to raid McGonagall's stash of matchsticks (the ones turned into needles for Transfiguration), much to her ire.**

 **2\. Some of you might think this is a** ** _Homestuck_** **or MS Paint Adventures reference, but there's actually a song from the early 1900s about the Midnight Crew, one which was turned into an acapella song for a** ** _Homestuck_** **album (and I'm sure a snatch from the original song is heard at the start of the flash animated scene** ** _[S] Jack: Ascend_** **). Presumably they're what the characters were named for.**

 **3\. You're wondering what the fuck Dumbledore is talking about? Well, Eric Blair actually wrote a very famous novel under a pseudonym. Said pseudonym was George Orwell. Said novel was, of course,** ** _Nineteen Eighty-Four_** **.**

 **4\. The family motto of the Addams Family in the films. Mock Latin for 'We joyfully feast on those who seek to subdue us'.**

 **5\. Voldemort is paraphrasing Doctor Gonzo's remarks on the dangers of eating pineal gland from** ** _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_** **.**


	12. Chapter 11: On the Nuances of Vampire

**CHAPTER 11:**

 **ON THE NUANCES OF VAMPIRE PUBERTY**

"Now, what's better than being a ridiculously overpowered vampire?" Luna asked not long afterwards (and managing to calm Hermione down from any strangulation attempts on her person).

After a moment of looking at each other, wondering whether this was a rhetorical question, the three other vampires (Remus and Sirius looking on) shrugged, before Hermione put her hand up. "Nothing?"

"Nope, but five points to Hermione Granger for trying. Oh, wait, it's rude to point. Okay, five blunts to her(1)."

"I don't smoke cannabis. Or anything for that matter," Hermione said. She left unsaid the fact that, due to recent events, she was strongly considering taking up drinking. She was a vampire now, she could regenerate her liver.

"Lily used to smoke weed," Sirius remarked. "That's how James finally snagged her, right, Moony(2)?"

Moony met Harry's sceptical look, and nodded. "Long story."

"Anyway," Luna said, getting attention back to her, "the correct answer to my question is: an even MORE ridiculously overpowered vampire! As vampires age and or drink the blood of enough people and absorb their souls, our powers grow. Think of it as the vampiric equivalent of puberty, only you can go through it after puberty, and instead of acne, you get cool superpowers. Just like the X-Men."

"Except the X-Men weren't blood-sucking fiends," Tonks muttered.

"Well, we aren't just blood-sucking fiends. We're blood-sucking friends!" Luna declared. "We are the inner circle of the Pudding Club!"

"Umm, Luna, I've been meaning to tell you," Remus said hesitantly. "But that name…it's a bit weird. Don't you know that 'the Pudding Club' is a euphemism for being pregnant?"

Luna tilted her head. "Of course I know, I'm a Ravenclaw. The better question is, do I give a damn? There's a number of very good reasons why I call this the Pudding Club, which have nothing to do with pregnancy. One, it's funny. Two, I like pudding. Three, who would expect a coven of vampires to be called the Pudding Club? Well, unless we call ourselves the Black Pudding Club, but that's a stretch. Anyway, back to vampire puberty. Thanks to the Death Eaters and other ne'er-do-wells that we ate as part of a balanced diet…we are now on the poise of vampire puberty."

Tonks frowned. "How do you know?"

"I checked our character sheets," Luna said, before pulling from who-knew-where a sheaf of papers which she handed out to her fellow vampires.

Hermione stared at the sheet of paper blankly (not that she was alone in doing so: Harry and Tonks were doing the same thing). After a few seconds, she asked, "I don't know what to be frustrated by more: where you got these from, how they exist, or why my character class is 'Bossy Know-It-All'."

"Mine's 'Clumsy Metamorph Auror'," Tonks growled in a good imitation of 'Mad-Eye' Moody.

"And mine is 'Hapless Messianic Archetype'," Harry said flatly. Then, his eyes roved up the page, and he actually smiled. "Huh, would you look at that? I'm already level 27."

"Nobody cares about the size of your level!" Hermione snapped in annoyance. "Anyway, experience levels are arbitrary bullshit anyway!"

"They're fun arbitrary bullshit," Luna said. She then fished a pair of reading glasses from out of the air (that wouldn't have looked out of place perched on the face of Elton John), and placed them on her face. "Anyway, perks, new abilities. One of these, and one of these, and ooh, one of those! Now…ooh! I'm definitely picking that one!"

"What one is that?" Tonks asked.

Luna merely grinned, showing off her array of fangs, before ticking a box on her character sheet. She ticked a few off, and then put it back whence it came. Maybe it was hammerspace. Maybe it was some eldritch location beyond the fourth wall. Or maybe she just knew how to create dimensional pockets any TARDIS would be jealous of.

Meanwhile, her three vampire friends, subjects, and future harem were poring over their character sheets. Harry began investing more in his general strength and stamina in particular (thanks to the Dursleys' tender ministrations), but put a few more points into intelligence and luck. Hermione, of course, invested more in intelligence and magic power. And Tonks? Well, she put more into dexterity. Hey, the girl was clumsy.

Anyway, they soon came to abilities, and after some careful consideration, they chose their abilities. Luna took the character sheets away and sent them whence they came. "So…what the hell was that all about?" Hermione asked, dreading the answer.

"Becoming harder, better, faster, stronger," Luna smirked. "Let me give you an example with some ancient and eldritch words."

"Please don't summon Shub-Niggurath in the room," Remus groaned.

"Hey, that needs at least a hundred words in the incantation…unless you're on her good list, in which case, you can just ring her phone number," Luna said. "Plus, you need a can of surströmming(3). She's acquired a taste for it. You know how you have weird cravings when pregnant? Well, she's had a thousand young, and the cravings for rotten, fermented fish in a can never really went away."

Remus stared at her flatly, before he said, "You know what? I can believe that Shub-Niggurath likes surströmming. Seriously, Padfoot poured a can of that over my head once for a prank. I had to burn my school robes and swim twelve laps naked in the Black Lake, during the _winter_ I might add, before I was allowed back in Hogwarts Castle. And that was without going into the scores of Scourgify spells I had to endure!"

"On the bright side," Sirius said as Remus glared pointedly at him, "we made Snape vomit copiously from the smell. Plus, the ladies were impressed at how big you were, even after swimming through an ice cold lake."

"Padfoot, have a nice cup of _shut the fuck up_." Remus then turned to Luna. "Anyway, what words were you talking about?"

"Oh, they're only two. _ZA WARUDO!_ "

Things seemed to strobe briefly from positive to negative (accompanied by a sound that was a mix between a clock grinding to a halt and what sounded like some eldritch entity's flatulence), but by the end of it, Sirius and Remus were embracing each other and kissing, Tonks was stripped to her underwear, and both Harry and Hermione were gurning in ways that would have made the inhabitants of Egremont proud(4). Oh, and Luna was dancing the Macarena on the ceiling of the room. But for Luna, that would fit the admittedly very loose definition of normal for her, even before she became a vampire.

Remus and Sirius broke away from each other hurriedly, Tonks blinked, and then glared at her state of deshabille, and Hermione and Harry brought their faces back to normal, massaging them. "What the hell was that?" Tonks demanded.

"Za Warudo," Luna said. "Or 'The World' if you're not a pedantic little weeaboo with too much time on your hands. I can stop time temporarily. Even summon steamrollers to squish people with."

"Why steamrollers?" Harry asked, before wondering whether he would regret asking that question.

"Well, aside from tradition, it's funny. I got the idea from a dream I had, where we were slaughtering Death Eaters, only for me to sneeze because a parallel universe equivalent of me was talking smack about me behind my back(5). I then got to talk to her in her dreams, and she said she could freeze time at will. And I decided, I wanted it. So, what did you get from going through vampire puberty?"

"Please stop saying that," Hermione said. Then, after a moment, she added, "Well, I chose the one called 'Bored Now'. Involves flaying someone alive with merely a thought. Dunno why that's called 'Bored Now', though. I figured I could use the skin of the Death Eaters for book covers."

"Nice," Luna said, nodding approvingly. "Now…Nym…GURK!" Luna collapsed to the ground, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.

"I put a moratorium on anyone calling me by my first name. I was surprised that was on the character sheet…or that even worked," Tonks said casually. "Every time someone calls me by my first name, they stop breathing for ten seconds. Or they shit their pants. Or they get suddenly and uncontrollably itchy. I've made it so only my parents are immune."

"That is incredibly and creatively spiteful, Tonks," Luna gasped hoarsely as she began breathing again, before giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up. "Kudos!"

"What can I say? Revenge is a dish best served cold."

"And with sprinkles! No, no, with dragées!"

"What?" Tonks asked.

"Dragées are the little edible ball-bearing like things you have on cakes," Hermione explained not-so-patiently. Though she wasn't impatient with Tonks: it was Luna's insanity that was irritating her.

Luna nodded so fast, she should have broken her neck. She didn't, and even if she did, her vampiric regeneration would have healed her faster than you can say 'Looney Lovegood'. She then turned to Harry. "So, what did you get for Vampire Puberty Day?"

"Stop that," Harry said. "Anyway, I wanted to bring back the dead, but unfortunately, I couldn't on the character sheet. But then I found something really cool. Something I wish I had when I was fighting the Basilisk. I was thinking, how am I going to stop some idiot Death Eater from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind? The answer? Use a magic spear." A spear made of blue, glowing light appeared hovering above Harry. "And if that don't work, use more spears." A veritable cloud of spears formed in the air above Harry, a blizzard of pointy magic weapon death just waiting to be unleashed on the world, and turning anyone and anything into burger meat.

Luna blinked, before she asked, "Do you have any one-eyed fish monster in you?"

Harry dispelled the spears with a wave of his hand. "Uhh, what?"

"Never mind. Anyway, we've undergone our vampire puberty…"

"Stop that," everyone else in the room said.

"…And now, it's time for the next phase of the plan to begin!" Luna said, pointing her finger to the ceiling.

"I don't think we even have a plan," Harry said. "I think you're making it up as you go along."

"Well, that's the writer's fault. He's making it up as he goes along. Anyway, what do we do with Dumbledore and Voldemort? Well, we can't kill them yet. As OP as we are, we're not quite yet at the level where we're guaranteed a victory, let alone a curbstomp where we're doing the stomping. Plus, the story has to go on for a bit longer. Which is why we're going to do a bit of gastronomical tourism."

"…What?" Tonks asked.

"Oh, we're going to be breaking into Muggle prisons, nomming on the worst inmates. Like Kira, only, we're vampires, and brave enough to do it in person. Oh, and we actually eat the inmates, not giving them heart attacks using a death god's notebook."

They just stared at her (which was becoming a frequent occurrence lately), before Hermione said, "Okay, fine. Let's do that. At least it's something constructive…"

"Oh, and where's Hedwig, Luna?" Harry asked.

"Well…"

* * *

It was a candle-lit table with dinner for two. A pair of rather magnificent-looking people sat across from each other. One was a man with red and gold-coloured hair, proud and handsome, but with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. The other was an elegant white-haired woman, beautiful, with golden eyes.

"How did you change us like that?" the woman asked.

The man smirked, gently sloshing a wine glass filled with petrol. "I've lived for a few centuries, I pick up a few tricks," he remarked. "Of course, the old goat bound me to him. Not that I didn't already have bindings, thanks to those four idiots. I swear, Rowena was a prude who makes McGonagall look like a party girl by comparison, Godric was a hotheaded lunatic, and Salazar loved that Basilisk of his a little too much. Helga was the only sane one. And Dumbledore, he named me Fawkes, after a terrorist! And the way he strokes my feathers…" The man shuddered. "Just as well he doesn't know I could do this. I'd be his catamite before you can say 'burn, baby burn'."

"You're older than he is," the woman pointed out.

"You're the long-lived magical snowy owl," the man said with a shrug. "Most snowy owls live for ten years, but you're…"

"Twenty-five. And I hope to live a long and healthy life."

"Meh, you're Harry Potter's familiar. Unless you're lucky, that won't be compatible with a long life. Anyway, your glass has some Elixir of Life I swiped from Flamel's stash when he wasn't looking," the man said.

The woman nodded, and drank some. Her face screwed up in disgust. "Ugh, and the aftertaste! How does Flamel stand drinking it day in and day out?"

"He and Perenelle use Listerine. This century, at least," the man said. "Don't worry, the food will taste that much sweeter by comparison."

"I hope so. It's a bit of a faux pas to take someone on a date and give them below-par food," the woman said.

"Now now, my dear Hedwig," the man said. "Just sit back and enjoy the meal."

"If you say so, Fawkes…"

 **CHAPTER 11 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **So, vampire puberty, and some Hedwig/Fawkes. The sad thing is, I haven't written the first Hedwig/Fawkes fiction on this website. Plus, see if you can spot the cavalcade of references with the vampire puberty powers.**

 **Review-answering time! Yes! I traumatised a LOT of people with the last chapter. Just a quick point, though. Nagini was humanoid, she didn't become like a lamia, half-human, half-snake. She was basically a sexy woman with scales, fangs, and eyes. I was thinking something not unlike Delphyne Gorgon from Marvel Comics, only with normal hair instead of snakes.**

 **DZ2** **: Thanks a bunch. Of course, you only have yourself to blame for inspiring this fic in the first place. ;)**

 **PersonaQeminod1** **: I considered doing a** ** _Disgaea_** **crossover once, but never got around to starting it in earnest. That being said, I do turn Voldemort, Dumbledore, and the Dursleys into Prinnys in my** ** _Highschool DXD_** **crossover** ** _Fall to Zenith_** **, and Serafall Leviathan basically plays soccer or volleyball with them.**

 **Agrond** **: No, it doesn't.**

 **Umbra NightFall** **: Yep. We do need to have stories where Deadpool and Luna meet. Hell, I think they've met in megamatt09's ongoing story** ** _Deadpool's New Job_** **.**

 **the black wolf in the mountain** **: At this time, no. In fact, if there's going to be a harem aside from Lunar Harmony, Tonks is the only additional member who will be added.**

 **WhiteElfElder** **: Why are you asking for Lockhart? By this point in the story, he's been Obliviated of almost everything except perhaps for his toilet training.**

 **PikaMew1288** **: …And here I was thinking that MY story ideas were weird…**

 **DalkonCledwin** **: Umm, what title is that? If we're talking about the Greatest Wizard Since Merlin, well, Zelretch wouldn't care. Well, save for unleashing pranking hell on Dumbledore. And I don't know, but I certainly made Luna Zelretch's honorary niece in some of my Nasuverse crossovers.**

 **Ultimate-Zelda-fan** **: Very easily. Besides, sexy Nagini is not a bad thing. And I never actually described the sex scene, just the prelude and the aftermath. So there. :P**

 **1\. I first read this joke in the first volume of Spike Milligan's memoirs,** ** _Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall_** **.**

 **2\. In sakurademonalchemist's story** ** _Best Served Cold_** **, this is actually how James managed to snag Lily. It makes so much sense, it's actually my personal fanon as to how the hell James and Lily hooked up. Give that a read, by the way. It chucks in some** ** _Hellsing_** **goodness.**

 **3\. I first heard about this crap on the** ** _QI_** **episode** ** _Horrible_** **. It's apparently so smelly, that Stephen Fry stated on that programme that the insurers wouldn't let him open up the can, as the smell apparently lingers something fierce. As in, the studio would be unusable.**

 **4\. Egremont in Cumbria actually have a gurning competition. Gurning, for those of you not in the know, means face-pulling.**

 **5\. This is seen briefly in** ** _Just a Touch of Kleptomania_** **, though this wasn't intended to be a dream at the time. I just wanted to do a reference to my own fic.**


	13. Chapter 12: On the Return to Secondary

**CHAPTER 12:**

 **ON THE RETURN TO SECONDARY EDUCATION**

Over the past couple of months, Dumbledore was getting increasingly frustrated. After all, every time he ate the chocolate cake he had been given, he'd basically become high (not that Dumbledore didn't enjoy the experience, but given the threats of lawsuits from Minerva, Pomona and Poppy, as well as the repair bill, he had to refrain from eating more of the cake), Harry Potter was nowhere to be found, Severus Snape had been traumatised by the sight of Voldemort having sex with his familiar, and Fawkes had been leaving at odd times. And that was without going into the increased vampire activity across the UK of late. The Queen of the Vampires in the UK was steadily gathering power, and Dumbledore could only hope that the vampires, if not allied to Voldemort, could reduce their numbers. Of course, that meant supplanting one darkness with another, something Dumbledore couldn't tolerate. He'd need to find a way to use Tonks to get rid of the Queen of Vampires. And if she didn't succeed? Well, one less Black in the world to worry about. And one less vampire.

Dumbledore had also heard of mysterious disappearances from Muggle jails, disappearances that only halted about a week ago. Of the worst murderers and rapists disappearing without a trace. Most Muggle authorities chalked it up to them escaping. But after Azkaban, and Voldemort (according to Severus) not regaining the followers who vanished, Dumbledore wasn't so sure. Either the Queen of Vampires was recruiting more members for her army, a horrifying-enough thought on its own (but why not turn more prisoners?), or, more likely, she and her minions were feeding on those prisoners, turning them into their familiars. And that would not do at all.

The problem was, Tonks was useless in getting any more information about the Queen. She refused to respond to any summons. Neither did Remus or Sirius. In fact, lately, the post owls to Tonks refused to go, as if they couldn't find their target. There had even been mysterious reports of steamrollers appearing out of thin air to squash some Death Eaters.

All of which was most aggravating. Dumbledore sighed. It was really like trying to lead a bunch of wilful, retarded children. How could they know what was best for them? Why couldn't they just allow him to guide them and lead them? Why couldn't he be allowed to shape Harry's destiny? Whether Harry lived or died, his life was purely for the benefit of Albus Dumbledore, either as a martyr, a symbol for people to rally around posthumously, or else as Albus' successor, once he was inculcated in the ways Magical Britain should truly be.

And now, Fudge had decided to send Dolores Umbridge as the new DADA teacher, as well as the High Inquisitor of Hogwarts. That most aggravating woman…Dumbledore shuddered. Fudge had sent her here purely to find ways of usurping Dumbledore.

Still, one thing was heartening, at least. He had since learned from his spies that Harry Potter had been spotted in Diagon Alley, shopping for supplies, in the company of Hermione Granger and, of all people, Luna Lovegood. Dumbledore felt ambivalent about that. On the one hand, Harry still being alive meant that his other plans could still go ahead. Given all the trouble Harry had put him through, falling off the radar like that, Dumbledore had decided that he would ensure that Harry became a martyr instead of making him into his successor (he had Neville Longbottom to groom into that). It was all for the Greater Good, after all, or at least it would certainly give Dumbledore no end of personal satisfaction. So in the end, same thing, really…

* * *

A disused storeroom in King's Cross Station. With a tortured howl of grinding machinery, a statue of Luna Lovegood in what looked like the mutant offspring of a leotard and a toga appeared. A portal of light appeared, and Harry, Hermione, and Luna left…oh, and Luna. Again. Dressed in the same costume as her statue. All four, improbably, seemed to be in their twenties now rather than their teens. In fact, all four were actually far, far older. "Hey, thanks for travelling with me, guys," the Luna who resembled the statue said with a grin.

"You're welcome," the vampire Luna said to her twin. "Will you be able to get back to your home dimension all right?"

"Yeah. Omega and the Rani will probably be wondering where I am," the other Luna said with a pout. "I mean, I'm a time machine! I can sit out the entirety of the Roman Empire and then come back in time for tea! And unlike the Doctor's, I won't screw up the destination! Not unless I want to, anyway. Of course, as vampires, you're technically my enemies, because, you know, that's how Time Lords feel about vampires(1), but I can't say no to a pretty face with a hot body."

The vampire Luna squealed, and began snogging her counterpart. "Luna is kissing a version of herself who is a TARDIS," Hermione said flatly. "I'd call it narcissism, but…it's just weird."

"I don't know whether it counts as incest or masturbation," Harry remarked. They had spent some very interesting years (well, a few decades by now) with Luna's counterpart. Including learning that their alternate selves were reincarnations of Time Lords, they had managed to gain the loyalty of Bellatrix Lestrange, and they had some pretty weird powers.

"Our Luna is now a vampire, and that Luna is now a time machine made out of mathematically-engineered matter," Hermione said with a resigned sigh. "I think it's more the latter." Louder, she said, "Get a room, you two!"

"I've got rooms!" the TARDIS Luna pouted as she and her vampiric counterpart broke off their kiss. "Plenty of them inside me! We've used them, remember? We've used the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom…"

"…Which is a swimming pool," Harry said(2).

"And we're **in** a room!" the TARDIS Luna pouted.

"It's okay," vampire Luna said, gently placing a hand on her counterpart's shoulder. "When you get bored, just come on over to this dimension, look us up. Hopefully, we'll have dealt with Voldemort and Dumbledore already. Oh, and if you see Zelretch again, say hi to him for me, okay?"

"Okay," the TARDIS Luna said with a smile.

They made their goodbyes, then the TARDIS Luna skipped back through the portal of light. The statue then disappeared with its habitual grinding howl.

After a moment, Hermione said, "You know, I would complain about that little adventure, but I have to say, in spite of the weirdness, I actually enjoyed that. Makes coming back here to clean up this mess just a big chore."

"Look at it this way," Harry said with a shrug. "We've done a lot of training, eaten a lot of bad people, and we have the experience now to take down Dumbledore and Voldemort. And we've only been gone for a short while. Tonks, Sirius and Remus would have kept the others safe."

"Well, let's go, then," Luna said with a grin. "Now, don't forget, use transformations to look like we're in our teens."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "We know…"

* * *

With a use of 'the World' later, Harry, Hermione and Luna were seated on the Hogwarts Express. Not long afterwards, a red-haired man appeared in the compartment with them in a flash of flame, accompanied by a white-haired woman with yellow eyes. "Ah," the man said. "Good to see you again."

"Umm…huh?" Harry asked coherently.

"Oh, sorry, we haven't met, at least with us looking like this," the man said. "I'm Fawkes. Well, that's what the meddlesome old goat called me. And that's Hedwig."

Harry and Hermione both stared at the two birds, transformed. Eventually, Harry said, "You know what? The sad thing is, thanks to Luna, I've seen stranger shit."

"And you've grown older, Harry," Hedwig said. "All of you have. Time travel?"

"Time travel," Luna affirmed. "You're a hot bird, Hedwig."

As Hedwig spluttered and blushed, Fawkes chuckled. "Actually, given that I can burst into flames, I'm hotter. Literally, anyway."

"Well, you're not so bad looking yourself for a transformed Phoenix," Luna said with an appreciative look. "Want to join the Pudding Club? Honorary member, obviously, I don't think we can turn Phoenixes into vampires."

Fawkes chuckled again. "What can I say? I was certainly amused by what you did to Dumbledore. And unlike many vampires, you are at least, shall we say…moral, after a fashion. Loose morals, admittedly, but morals you still have. Actually, it was my very great pleasure to meet Genevieve a few centuries ago. You are very much like her, if somewhat chaotic. In any case," he continued, his handsome features becoming solemn, "I have witnessed Dumbledore's machinations go on for long enough. And my bindings are weakening. Thanks to your sabotaged chocolate cake, he's forgotten to renew them. A simple _Finite_ should break them."

Hermione soon had her wand out, and waved it. Fawkes convulsed briefly, and sighed. "Oh, much better. Hey, even the ones the Founders put on me are gone. Great! I want to do some travelling. Oh don't get me wrong, I still think of Hogwarts as home, but it's so bloody boring to be stuck there, at the beck and call of the Headmaster. Seriously, as bad as Dumbledore was, you don't want to know what Phineas Black had me do."

"No, we don't," Harry and Hermione chorused, speaking over Luna's "Yes we do!"

"So…since when did you look like a human, Hedwig?" Harry asked.

"Fawkes here used the spell on me. As it happens, I have enough magic and intelligence to use it at will." She shrugged. "He's a charmer, but we're still working with the age gap. I'm twenty-five, he's lived for over a millennium…actually, how old are you guys now?"

Harry, Hermione, and Luna looked at each other, before Harry said, "Umm, fifty-odd, I think? It's hard to tell with time travel, as well as when you're a vampire and aging is optional."

"The upshot is, we're old enough to get really intimate!" Luna chirped. "Which reminds me, we need to get Tonks in on the action. Oh, and can we add you guys to the fun?"

Fawkes and Hedwig looked at each other, before she said, "As long as it's only while we're in human form. Otherwise, it'd be too much weird for us."

"And for the readers, I'm sure," Fawkes said.

"Oh, you can break the fourth wall too?" Luna asked.

"I've lived for a long time, Luna, I've picked up more than a few tricks," Fawkes said. "There was this rather vulgar if funny fellow in red and black spandex. Called himself the Merc with the Mouth, whatever that was. He taught me many things, as despite my age, I am also smart enough to know when I can learn something new."

"Please don't spread the insanity," Hermione groaned. "I don't want the walls of space and time cracking open and the essence of Azathoth oozing through the cracks."

"Fine," Fawkes said, holding up his hands in surrender. "Incidentally, what do you want to do with the Weasleys?"

"Oh, don't worry. I've done a bit of shipping as a diversionary tactic," Luna said coyly…

* * *

Later on, as the Hogwarts Express moved out of the station, Ginny and Colin Creevey were having a snog in their compartment. They had bonded over their mutual stalkerdom…sorry, their _interest_ in Harry Potter. They were even discussing what they had in their little shrines. A match made in Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, depending on your opinion, though they would certainly have a happy marriage, even if it was a slightly twisted one.

And in another compartment, Ron Weasley (who was now sporting a prefect badge) was listening as Susan Bones spoke about what things were like in the DMLE. He didn't know it, but a spark would eventually grow that would lead to him having a deeper relationship. Ron Weasley would grow up. Yeah, believe it or not, he's capable of that!

But for the rest of this narrative, the Weasley brood, by and large, have become irrelevant. They got their happily ever afters, even if they weren't the ones they expected. Now, back to the core members of the Pudding Club…

* * *

"…And that's why gnomes that steal underpants are a dangerous threat to wizarding society," Luna concluded.

The others in the compartment looked at each other in bemusement, so it was to some considerable relief that the compartment door was opened, and Draco Malfoy made his annual contractual obligation appearance to attempt to taunt, intimidate, and threaten Harry Potter. And he was flanked, as always, by his minions, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, a pair of thugs who looked like shaved gorillas, if that wasn't an insult to gorillas everywhere. Oh, and he had a prefect badge.

"Oh, _bugger!_ " Hermione said, slapping her head. "I got one of those in the mail before we left on holiday!" She fished around in her robes and found it, before pinning it to them.

Draco snorted. "A Mudblood as a prefect? Standards are really slipping," he sneered. "And who are these two? More filth?" he asked, indicating Fawkes and Hedwig, who were still in their human forms.

Harry, Hermione and Luna all looked at each other. Then, Harry cast an _Accio_ , bringing the three into the compartment, Hermione closed the door with a spell, and Luna set up the biggest privacy charm she could set up. "Good news, Draco," Harry said with a vicious grin, showing off his fangs. "We're feeling a little peckish, and what do you know, we've just had some food turn up."

"What?! You're vampires?!" Draco demanded.

"Yep," Hermione hissed. "Can I please eat Draco, Harry? I want to get back at him for all the times he's called me a Mudblood."

"Sure, leave Luna and I with the fatty foods," Harry snarked good-naturedly.

"You can't do this!" Draco yelped.

"Why not? Is it because your father will hear of this? Oh believe me, Draco, he'll be following you shortly thereafter," Hermione hissed.

"Or is it because I'm supposed to be Dumbledore's little lapdog?" Harry snarled. "Newsflash, I'm not. The dog's biting back. It's no more Mr Nice Guy, Malfoy. I gave you so many chances, and you threw them back in my face."

"No, you did! You refused my offer!"

"Because you were an arrogant little twat with bleached hair and a gene pool that was more of a gene puddle," Harry said. "What did you say to me on the Express on the way back after our fourth year? That my friends would be next to die at Voldemort's hands?" He chuckled darkly. "Well, guess what? Remember that 'breakout' at Azkaban? That was us."

"What?" Draco asked.

"Yeah. Your Aunt Bella says hello, by the way. Well, more like 'burn in hell, you cowardly son of traitorous scum', but it's the thought that counts. We ate Voldemort's followers in Azkaban."

"We've even eaten your godfather," Hermione said.

"Uncle Severus?" Draco asked, in a lost voice, before he shrieked, "You lie!"

"We're not," Luna said. "I am Luna Lovegood, Queen of the Vampires of Magical Britain. And do you know what that makes you?"

"Here's a clue," Harry said. "Bitch, we eat people…"

* * *

Not long afterwards, Hedwig grimaced. "Did you have to eat them in front of us?"

Hermione belched, patting her stomach. "Sorry, Hedwig."

"Do you want an IOU on some bacon?" Harry asked.

"Actually, I would prefer a small packet of prosciutto," Hedwig decided loftily. "And some hard liquor with a good vintage. I want to forget what I just saw."

"I thought you'd be glad to see Malfoy dead," Harry said.

"Oh, I am, but I don't need to see the particulars. There's a difference between me eating rodents in the wild, and seeing a vampire absorb someone's soul."

"Okay. By the way, I ate the Dursleys."

Hedwig's mood did an instant 180. While she hated Malfoy for what he did to Harry, she had come to detest the Dursleys, especially for the way they treated her personally, as well as Harry. Especially Vernon. So she smirked viciously.

"Anyway, Draco had some new information," Hermione said. "Thankfully, the list of Slytherins in Hogwarts who are actively supporting Voldemort is pretty small. The others are either indifferent, or neutral. I say we eat them."

"But not before we unleash chaos on Hogwarts, or rather, on Dumbledore!" Luna declared. "We need him to watch his world crumbling around him. And then…oh, wait a moment…" She placed a dust mask over her face. "…And then, when his world is _ashes_ …then he'll have our permission to die."

The silence that ensued shortly thereafter was broken by Hedwig saying, "Well, that's ominous."

"It was meant to be!" Luna pouted behind the dust mask. "This was meant to herald in an age of chaos! Craziness! Violence! Vice!"

"Well, we've indulged in a lot of that so far, I have to say," Hermione remarked. "How are we going to top what we've done so far?"

"Oh, I'll find a way," Luna said, before she began to cackle evilly.

* * *

And the red locomotive continued on, bringing its burden to Hogwarts. Dumbledore didn't know it, but he should have been feeling a distinct sensation of dread. He should have, but he didn't. You could say that was a pity, but he didn't deserve that…

 **CHAPTER 12 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **And the weirdness keeps flowing. And I've managed to tie in elements from my** ** _Doctor Who_** **crossover** ** _Renaissance of the Renegades_** **. Incidentally, if you haven't read that, and want to read a Harmony story with Dark Harry and Dark Hermione, then give it a go. And I've managed to age Harry, Luna and Hermione up so that they can have a harem now. So not only Tonks is in there, but, amazingly, so too is Fawkes and Hedwig. Yeah, this is that kind of fic.**

 **I wrote in that bit about Ron and Ginny because, despite my earlier thoughts of doing some Weasley-bashing for this story, I realised I just couldn't go through with it. Okay, I bashed Ginny a little in that whole 'stalker shrine' thing, but still, it's better than how she's been portrayed in some fics. And I wanted to throw Ron a bone. They won't be participating in the story anymore, save for a few cameos here and there.**

 **Now, since the last chapter, most of the reviews tried to think about what references the powers each of the Pudding Club members obtained were to. I have to admit, Tonks' first name having a curse on it was not really a reference, though I was partly inspired by the Potterverse/** ** _Homestuck_** **crossover,** ** _I Hold With Those Who Favour Fire_** **by Flipspring, where Molly uses a Cuss Curse on Karkat Ventas. Every time he swears, he starts choking on his tongue. And given that this is Karkat, well…**

 **Anyway, references. I originally wanted them to all be vampire-related powers, but I couldn't quite manage that. Most people got Luna's power, which is based on that of the vampire Dio Brando in** ** _JoJo's Bizarre Adventure_** **. In the** ** _Stardust Crusaders_** **story arc, Dio Brando gains the ability to stop time, an ability paired with his Stand (a sort of proxy body who can fight with and for him) called** ** _The World_** **. In Japanese, this is translated to** ** _Za Warudo_** **. The sound effect is basically my way of describing the sound effect used in the most recent anime adaptation of** ** _Stardust Crusaders_** **.**

 **Hermione's power is only a reference to vampires by proxy, coming from** ** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_** **. "** ** _Bored now_** **" is a catchphrase of an alternate Willow when she is a vampire…and is used when, well, the main Willow has something of a conniption involving dark magic (so not a vampire, just an overpowered witch with an axe to grind). She says this phrase just before flaying someone alive. Someone, I might add, who deserved it.**

 **Harry's power is NOT a reference to** ** _Team Fortress 2_** **, although his spiel was modified from the** ** _Meet the Engineer_** **video. It's NOT a reference to Cu Chulainn from** ** _Fate/Stay Night_** **either. I couldn't think of an appropriate vampire power that I hadn't done in this story before. But then, I remembered who Harry was an adopted son of in my fic** ** _Underground's Champion_** **. The magic spears are basically a reference to Undyne, a key character (and yes, she is a one-eyed fish monster) from the game** ** _Undertale_** **.**

 **Review-answering time!** **coduss** **: Ha! Seriously, how do you pronounce half the words Lovecraft comes up with? As for Shoggoths…hmm, maybe I should try bringing them into the story…**

 **Dis Lexic** **: No. Though she might scream "WRRRRYYYYY!"**

 **dark dhampir** **: I went back and checked the story in question (specifically chapter 12 of** ** _Best Served Cold_** **). James and Lily actually both got high and drunk. At the time, Lily already smoked the magical weed (partly to deal with Petunia's attitude), so James giving her some of the highest quality stuff was more of a bribe. If you want someone to blame, blame sakurademonalchemist, as she was the one who wrote it. It was more two teenagers being stupid under the influence than one teenager date-raping the other.**

 **PikaMew1288** **: Actually, she'd dress them all up as characters from** ** _Fate/Stay Night_** **. Luna as Illya, Hermione as Rin, Harry as Shirou, Tonks as Medea or Medusa, Sirius as Kirei, and Remus as Kiritsugu.**

 **Cateagle** **: I have to agree.** ** _A Civil Campaign_** **was one of my favourites of the Vorkosigan Saga. Though I'm not sure how much Taura could help Remus with, but I'm sure that they'd make a good couple anyway. Actually, maybe we should have Luna do to Voldemort's head what Cordelia did to Vidal Vordarian's head. Shopping Trip, anyone?**

 **Babiluv22** **: I'm glad this story made you laugh. While many of my stories have humour to one degree or another, this is probably my crackiest fic, designed for humour, though my** ** _Final Fantasy XII_** **crossover** ** _Nitimur in Vetitum_** **and my** ** _Portal_** **crossover** ** _Is Your Great-Aunt an AI?!_** **also have quite a lot of humour.**

 **1\. In the** ** _Doctor Who_** **story** ** _State of Decay_** **, it's revealed that the Time Lords fought a war long ago against monstrous vampires. In fact, Rassilon himself left secret instructions to combat the threat of vampires in every TARDIS, albeit on an antiquated storage system.**

 **2\. While some sources claim this is a fallacy (with Leela calling the TARDIS swimming pool a bathroom in** ** _The Invasion of Time_** **), others claim otherwise, so I'm going with the notion that the TARDIS' bath is basically a swimming pool.**


	14. Chapter 13: On the Delicacy of Working

**CHAPTER 13:**

 **ON THE DELICACY OF WORKING OFF FRUSTRATIONS**

"So, how are we going to do this?" Harry asked, steepling his fingers. "Bringing down Dumbledore?"

"Good question," Hermione said. They were sitting around a fireplace in the Room of Requirement on the night of their arrival, their familiars covering for them, shapeshifted into themselves in their normal bedrooms. Fawkes was enjoying a crystal tumbler full of petrol, while Hedwig was sitting on Harry's lap. "I mean, we have the power to do it. The question is, how? I mean, we've got a lot of frustrations to work off here, especially Harry." As Luna opened her mouth, Hermione said, "No, not that sort of frustration. I'm sure none of us would fuck Dumbledore with someone else's dick."

"Especially if that someone is Gellert Grindlewald," Fawkes muttered as he downed his drink, and belched out a small fireball.

"I wasn't suggesting that, though sodomy with other implements was a possibility," Luna said. "Did you know that they made dildos out of bread in Ancient Greece(1)?"

"Waste of good bread," Harry said with a grimace. Unless chocolate was involved, he tried to keep food and sex separate. Otherwise, it got rather too messy. "But Hermione's got a point. It's too easy to just kill him. Especially if we end up making him a martyr in the process. Too many people think that the sun shines out of his arse."

"Believe it or not, he once made a potion for that a long time ago," Fawkes said. "Unfortunately, he got a bad case of sunburn on his piles."

"TMI, Fawkes," Hermione said with a grimace, one shared by everybody else in the room.

"Hey, I've known Dumbledore for far longer than anyone in this room…well, I'd say combined, but with the time travel you have been through…well, years of experience of him counts. I'm just telling you what he does."

"Well, our task, then, is to engage in character assassination," Luna said, from where she was standing next to the fireplace. "Boom, fameshot! Who living knows about Dumbledore being Grindlewald's former lover?"

"Not many, or at least not many who'd be believed," Fawkes said. "Aberforth knows."

"Aberforth…wait, isn't he the owner of the Hog's Head in Hogsmead?" Harry asked.

"Yes. He got into trouble for using illicit charms on a goat. Nothing that bad, but unfortunately, it gave him the reputation of someone who shags goats. Aberforth the Goat-Buggerer. In truth, he was trying out a new charm for helping to birth kids. Baby goats. Albus is the one most responsible for the rumours. Anyway, there's also old Bathilda Bagshot…and there's of course Grindlewald himself."

Hermione snapped her fingers. "Rita Skeeter! That cow owes me favours for not exposing her Animagus transformation from last year! If we point her in the right direction…"

"It's a good start," Fawkes said.

"That can still come back to bite us," Hedwig said, scowling with the remembrance of what Rita did to Harry last year, during the Tri-Wizard Tournament. She was also enjoying the novel feeling of sitting in his lap. Really, being in a human form had its advantages.

"Maybe, but Rita would rather go for causing the biggest scandal that she can find out," Hermione said. "Harry may be the Boy Who Lived, but Magical Britain put Dumbledore on a pretty damn big pedestal. Rita delights in cracking it, so she'd love to see him fall. She might even write a tell-all book. There's also the possibility of having her expose Voldemort's true past as Tom Riddle."

"Wouldn't that potentially have the Death Eaters kill her?" Fawkes asked.

Luna shrugged. "Acceptable collateral damage."

"I can't believe I'd accept a person's life as acceptable collateral damage," Hermione said, "but it IS Rita Skeeter."

The others nodded in agreement. Given her habit of trying to defame everyone she could, even those who weren't on pedestals to begin with, well, Skeeter dying was acceptable. Petty, yes, perhaps a little disproportionate, but perfectly acceptable. After all, Skeeter didn't so much as have a poison pen as much as one that was downright toxic.

"Again, a good start," Fawkes said. "Of course, once Voldemort and Dumbledore are dealt with…what then?"

"Umm, days of wild hedonism for the rest of our immortal lives?" Luna asked, as if it was patently obvious.

"I meant about the system," Fawkes said. "Magic seems to amplify the foibles and faults of humanity. The government is ridiculously nepotistic. I'm not saying you should go into the government yourselves."

"Why not?" Luna pouted.

Hedwig rolled her eyes. "I shudder to think what _you_ would do as the Minister, Luna, and in any case, the voting public do tend to get a bit nervous about the undead being in charge. Yes, I know, vampires aren't actually undead. Just freakish eldritch abominations in human form that drink blood."

"We love you too, Hedwig," Harry said, cuddling the owl-turned-human, and causing her to smile at the affection and the humour. "But Hedwig's right, you know. Beyond a certain point, we're going to have to drop out of the limelight. Quite frankly, I'd be looking forward to the quiet life. Well, I don't mean literally quiet. Seriously, Hermione, you rattled the windows last time."

Hermione scoffed, ignoring the innuendo. "You mean quiet as in withdrawing from public life. I get that. Though how likely you are to get that wish, I have no idea."

"About as likely as Shalltear Bloodfallen growing up?" Luna asked(2).

"…I thought we weren't going to mention her again after your TARDIS counterpart brought us to that world," Harry said. "Seriously, since when did vampires turn into lampreys on legs?"

"Never mind that, what about her fetishes?" Hermione said, her face twisting in disgust. "Seriously, she got off on you fighting her and that crazy bitch Albedo. That was so wrong on so many levels…"

* * *

On a distant world, deep with the Tomb of Nazarick, a pale-skinned, silver-haired girl wearing a Gothic Lolita outfit and a dark-haired, golden eyed woman with horns sneezed simultaneously, twice. A skeleton dressed in robes all but blinked (insomuch as he could without eyeballs or eyelids), and asked, in a deep, booming, but oddly uncertain voice, "Are you two all right?"

"Nothing to worry about, Lord Ainz," the horned woman said. "The lamprey and I must have come down with something after spending too much time listening to Cocytus' reports on his level."

"Maybe you're coming down with something because your immune system is expired goods, like the rest of you, Albedo?" the silver-haired girl asked.

The demoness sneered. "Better than being pumped with more preservatives than a fast food hamburger!"

"Actually, it may not be a cold," the skeleton dubbed 'Lord Ainz' said. "Back home, sneezing twice meant that someone was talking about you behind your back, and not in a good way, either."

Albedo and Shalltear Bloodfallen looked at each other. "It was those three, wasn't it?" Shalltear asked.

"I would not be surprised," Albedo said. For once, the two were united in a common grudge. Indeed, the entire Tomb of Nazarick was, after the whirlwind forces of darkness that called themselves 'Vampire Lunar Harmony Plus One'.

Ainz, formerly Momonga, formerly Satoru Suzuki, sighed, knowing what they meant. He picked at his now tie-dyed robes ruefully. These were really hard to wash, even with magic, and thanks to those three, his robes looked like a hippy had painted, and then vomited on them. Every time he walked abroad in the Tomb, he risked either the laughter of his subordinates, or sending them into epileptic fits from the clashing colours.

And that was without going into what happened elsewhere. Pandora's Actor now wanted to stage a production of _Cats_ , Demiurge had been left gibbering in the corner of his quarters, and Sebas was still trying to rouse most of the Pleiades from post-coital comas.

The only upshot of the situation was that that deranged bitch Luna had given him a spell that allowed him to have a proper body, and not just a skeleton…for proper boning, as she put it. So Albedo was happy for them leaving her one such gift…and frankly, so was Momonga. It couldn't be called a healthy sex life when the sex partners were an obsessive demon and a lich who could adopt a proper body every now and then…but damned if it wasn't good…

* * *

Speaking of sex lives…

Sirius Black scowled as he heard the bed springs squeaking from the next room, the pants and the moans. Of all the times for the bloody silencing charms on the rooms to fail, it was while Moony and Tonks were banging each other. It was times like this that he really wished that vampires and werewolves universally loathed each other, if only because he didn't have to hear Moony and Tonks fuck.

"YES! YES! IMPALE ME WITH YOUR STAKE! AHHHH!"

…And it was even weirder than he thought. Seriously, what kind of dirty talk was that?

Or maybe it was simple jealousy. His best friend (well, that was still alive) was getting some tail (and shapeshifting cousin tail, at that! Dammit, why couldn't both he and Nymphadora have the same blasé attitude his family had to incest?!), his godson had a goddamned harem, and Sirius was getting blue-balled in a serious way. Hell, he'd had blue balls ever since Barty Crouch Senior (that dried-up old turd in a suit who looked like that sheep-obsessed farmer from _The Vicar of Dibley(_ _3)_ ) decided to dispense with even the pretence of law and order and chuck him into Azkaban, with the key thrown into the North Sea for good measure.

Seriously, he could have been Dracula, first get the immortality, and then the bitches(4). There should be a movie with Sirius Black as Count Dracula…yeah, there should have been. Instead, he'd probably be stuck playing some weirdo tycoon from the future, or a disfigured quadriplegic paedophile, or some top copper playing second-fiddle to some idiot dressed as a bat, or an evil copper who comes up against a hitman and screams "EVVVVERYYYYONNNNNE!" at his subordinates(5).

And speaking of screaming…

"AHH! _AHH!_ _ **AHHHHHHH!**_ "

Oh, come on! Nobody actually screamed like that while they came! That was the province of writers of really shitty pornographic writing.

Sirius snarled quietly. He needed someone to bang. Female, willing, at least 20 or so, preferably hot, not picky about magical blood. Or maybe there was that little shop in Knockturn…actually, yes, he'd go there. He was desperate enough for one of their Inflatable Ingrids right about now…

* * *

Lying in bed together, their bodies drenched in sweat, Remus and Tonks listened as they heard the door to the next room slam open, and then footsteps storming down the stairs. "Just as planned," Remus said with a smirk.

"I know, right? Best prank ever," Tonks said. "Eroding the silencing charms, and making lots of noise…and I didn't even fake the screams. Seriously, why are vampires and werewolves at odds again?"

Remus blinked. "You know, that's a bloody good question. I mean, I could be boring and discuss it from what I know from my DADA lessons…"

" ** _No_**. Don't be _boring_ ," Tonks said. "I want to fall asleep because I'm worn out from this, not from a fucking DADA lecture. I had enough of those when Professor Port was DADA teacher(6)."

"Oh? How did he lose his job again?"

"Long story short, he waxed his moustache. And when he was demonstrating fire spells…well, let's just say it took him a while to be able to grow it back, what with the burns. Only thing that ever shut him up, really," Tonks said.

"I'm surprised you didn't want to join that harem Luna seems set on giving Harry," Remus said.

"Meh, I'm fine. I might give it a go later, but for now, I want _you_." With that, Tonks straddled Remus, ready to begin Round 2…

* * *

In his own bed, Snape, now a familiar of Hermione Granger, scowled. Somewhere, Remus Lupin was being happier than he deserved to be. In fact, so was Potter and that Mudblood bitch. And what was worse, he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

While it was probably not actually his own personal Hell, it wasn't far off the mark. And he knew, as a vampire familiar, that said Hell wasn't going to be ending any time soon…

* * *

Meanwhile, Dumbledore was dreaming pleasant dreams where he was played by Jude Law, and Gellert was being played by Johnny Depp. They were not the dreams of a troubled man, which he was, not that he'd admit it. He viewed these dreams as vindication of his righteousness. But events would prove him otherwise…

 **CHAPTER 13 ANNOTATIONS:**

 **So, here you have it. You have a Guest reviewer to thank for this chapter. They wanted a new chapter in time for Halloween, and while normally, I wouldn't grant a request, I managed to get enough inspiration for this chapter. So, here you are.**

 **Incidentally, sorry about the rather large cutaway to the** ** _Overlord_** **universe. I'm really into the light novels and anime at the moment (not to be confused with the games), and I've done two crossovers so far: a Potterverse one called** ** _Yield to the Darkness_** **, and a** ** _Red vs Blue_** **one called** ** _Xenagogy for Belligerent AIs and Dungeon Denizens_** **(where Church takes the place of Momonga).** ** _Overlord_** **'s a good series, and I recommend it.**

 **Actually, I'm kicking myself for not coming to** ** _Overlord_** **sooner, as it has one of the most horrific depictions of a vampire I have seen since Alucard from** ** _Hellsing_** **…or the Haemovores from the** ** _Doctor Who_** **story** ** _The Curse of Fenric_** **. I'd have loved to have seen Harry, Hermione and Luna as Shalltear-style vampires…**

 **Review-answering time!** **Noxlux013** **: You know, that's a good question I don't have an answer to. Though I'm sure more than a few writers have made Remus badass…**

 **Agrond** **: Of course.**

 **Gothic Chevy** **: Nope. Not going there, if only because making Harry hung like a horse seems to be a fanfic cliché.**

 **Ultimate-Zelda-Fan** **: It wouldn't suit these guys, but it's a nice thought.**

 **DZ2** **: I'm glad you liked it. Then again, you only have yourself to blame for inspiring me, regardless of whether you enjoy this story or not. :P**

 **1\. This is one of the many bizarre things I learned via the British comedy panel and quiz show series** ** _QI_** **.**

 **2\. In** ** _Overlord_** **, as mentioned above in the notes, Shalltear Bloodfallen is a vampire, an NPC created originally by a player in an MMORPG who was, frankly, an unrepentant pervert. Normally, she looks like a Gothic Lolita with pale skin and silver hair. But when she gives into her bloodlust…well, let's just say that Albedo's insult of Shalltear being a lamprey is actually very accurate. And when she gets serious…well, her face looks normal…but she dons armour that gives her the title of the Bloody Valkyrie.**

 **3\. AKA Owen, played by Roger Lloyd Pack.**

 **4\. Sirius is referencing Vegeta's sleep-mumbling from** ** _Dragonball Z Abridged_** **, as he fantasises about what he will get with the Dragonballs.**

 **5\. I just listed many of Gary Oldman's roles in film, including Zorg from** ** _The Fifth Element_** **, Mason Verger from** ** _Hannibal_** **, James Gordon from the Dark Knight Trilogy, and Norman Stansfield from** ** _Leon the Professional_** **. Oh, and of course, Dracula from Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of the novel.**

 **6\. Yes, this is a** ** _RWBY_** **reference.**


End file.
